Sunday 27th June 1819
when we found dinner very agreeable. Sunday June 27th … We went to Church at eleven o’Clock in the Duke of Beaufort’s Pew which is open to travellers who are staying at the Inn; it had been arranged that we would pass today and tomorrow with Dr Nicholas’s at
Blenderry where he has a very pretty House commanding a most beautiful view; we arrived there about 4 o’Clock and after dinner we walked to White Castle half a mile from Blenderry it was rather a fine ruin, but those I have since seen are much superior to it. We
St Mary's Priory Church, where the Copland’s went this Sunday, was founded as a Benedictine priory in 1075 but the current church dates mostly from the 18th and 19th centuries. The tower, of Old Red Sandstone with three stages, dates from the fourteenth century. The building deteriorated after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536. By 1730, the church was described as ruinous and decayed. Significant rebuilding was undertaken in 1736-7 by Francis Smith of Warwick, who constructed an entirely new nave, but this work has also mostly gone. A new spire rising to a height of 60 metres (200 ft) was provided in 1743, to the design of Nathaniel Wilkinson of Worcester. The church is by far the tallest building in Monmouth, with the gilded cockerel weather vane some 205 feet above the ground. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mary's_Priory_Church,_Monmouth
1799 Aquatint published by P R. Ackermann, from the Casgliad Tirlun Cymru (Welsh Landscape Collection) (WlAbNL)003381775. This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 100 years or less.
The interior of the Priory church of St Mary in Monmouth, Monmouthshire, Wales. NickGeorge1993 at English Wikipedia, the copyright holder of this work Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant
Author KJP1 for wikimedia https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Priory_Church_of_St_Mary,_Monmouth.jpg This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
St Mary’s Priory Church 1799 Aquatint; 2016 Entrance from Whitecross Street; and Inside the church 1993 (these pews may have have been contemporary to the Copland’s visit in 1819)
Henry Somerset, 7th Duke of Beaufort, KG , styled Earl of Glamorgan until 1803 and Marquess of Worcester between 1803 and 1835, was a British peer, soldier, and politician. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Somerset,_7th_Duke_of_Beaufort He made his pew available to travellers staying at the Beaufort Arms
Blenderry House: Unable to source Blenderry House, but John Quincy Adams’s diaries place Dr George Nicholas (1763-1829), headmaster of Great Ealing School and widower with four sons and five daughters in their twenties and teens together with a younger female ward, firmly within his neighbour Alexander Copland’s social circle. Adams’s entry for 15 December 1815 records that “Dr Nicholas is going in the meantime to Wales to visit his father, 86 years of age and now very ill….” And on 13 January 1816 “Dr Nicholas talked about his Welsh tour. He said nobody paid any rents at present. He had £300 due to himself for rent of an estate in Wales, of which he could not obtain a farthing”. An American President in Ealing – The John Quincy Adams diaries, 1815-1817, Little Ealing History Group,2014, p44. Given the strong social connection between the Copland and Nicholas families it is likely that Lucy’s “party consisting of fourteen” included their friends from London. When they parted Lucy writes “we bade farewell of our kind friends after passing three most happy days with them; they returned to Blenderry and we proceeded to Abergavenny”. The Copland’s having dined at Blenderry ( or Brynderi, see below) walked to White Castle and back and probably stayed with their Nicholas friends Sunday and Monday nights before leaving them at Raglan for Abergavenny on Tuesday.
Michael Freeman, curator of Ceredigion Museum, Aberystwyth, 1991-2012, has contacted us following publication to clarify the location of “Blenderry”. He writes: I think Blenderry must be Bryn-deri or Brynderi - see https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Brynderi,+Abergavenny+NP7+8UE/@51.853392,-2.8935236,13.83z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x4871cfa82a224e1b:0xc5d647e8c3b77b71!8m2!3d51.851053!4d-2.883914?hl=en and
https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/36533?term=Bryn%20Deri
White Castle was built in the wake of the Norman invasion of England in 1066. Shortly after the invasion, the Normans pushed up into the Welsh Marches, where William the Conqueror made William Fitz Osbern the Earl of Hereford. Earl William added further to his new lands, capturing the towns of Monmouth and Chepstow. The Normans used castles extensively to subdue the Welsh, establish new settlements and exert their claims of lordship over the territories.By 1538, White Castle had fallen into disuse and then into ruin; a 1613 description noted that it was "ruynous and decayed". In 1825, shortly after Lucy's visit, "the Three Castles" (White Castle and its sister fortifications of Grosmont and Skenfrith) were sold off to Henry Somerset, 7th Duke of Beaufort. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Castle,_Monmouthshire
White Castle: Gatehouse and curtain wall of the inner ward, seen from the outer ward. Released under Open Government Licence version 1.0 (OGL v1.0). by Cadw (see http://cadw.gov.wales/copyright/?lang=en)
Did Lucy write-up her diary at a later date? “it was rather a fine ruin, but those I have since seen are much superior to it.” suggests Lucy wrote this part of her diary later, possibly after Goodridge (Monday) but more likely on arriving at Abergavenny after leaving Raglan and bidding farewell to her friends (Tuesday 29th) whose company she and her family had been enjoying since Sunday.
Can you help us?
Blenderry & Dr Nicholas: There can be little doubt that the Dr Nicholas referred to in Lucy’s diary is Dr George Nicholas. However it would be of value to confirm, if at all possible, that the Welsh estates referred to in the Quincy diaries are those of Blenderry and to locate the house and estate if they still exist.
Old Regency Prints or Pictures and maps of the Old Coaching Routes: Any illustrations of what Lucy would have seen in 1819 will bring our research alive. Any modern pictures of the streets, buildings, gardens and sites will enable us to see the changes that two centuries have wrought.