A Lost House and Landscape: Margam in about 1700

Margam House was created out of the domestic buildings of the Cistercian abbey of Margam during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The largest and most important country house in Glamorgan, it was demolished around 1790. The surrounding landscape has also changed greatly over the last three hundred years.

Inspired by Dutch topographical paintings and engravings, they were intended as a record of the house, its garden, park, and surrounding estate. Both paintings comprise a bird-eye view of the house, its service buildings, and gardens in an extensive landscape.

Though naïve, they are full of incident and detail.

Click an image to explore that painting in detail

View of Margam House, Glamorgan, looking South

View of Margam House, Glamorgan, looking North