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It is
probable that John Josiah Guest had Dowlais House built around 1818,
possibly as a home for his bride
Maria
Rankin. It was a large, solid, well-proportioned structure. Her
early death left him a widower until his
marriage to Charlotte, daughter of the Earl of Lindsey, in 1833.
Better known as Lady Charlotte Guest, she
described her first visit to Dowlais House in her diary.
‘ By
the time we had reached the House it was quite dark and the
prevailing gloom gave full effect to the
light of the blazing
furnaces, which was quite unlike all I had ever before seen or even
imagined. The interior
of the
house was precisely what Merthyr’s sketch of it had taught me to
expect. My first impulse was to establish
myself in the library, by far the pleasantest room in the house. We
walked out as far as the limits of the garden,
round the house and
stood without the gate – the furnace gate-upon the steps leading to
the Works’.
It is here that she
succeeded in translating the Welsh tales the Mabinogion into English
and within the short
space of thirteen years
she also gave birth to ten children in Dowlais House. No doubt it
was partly on their
account that she
encouraged her husband in 1846 to buy Canford Manor in Dorset.
Cholera in Dowlais made it
essential for the young
family to move from Dowlais House. However, on his death bed, John
Josiah Guest
insisted on returning to
Dowlais House in 1852 so that he could die where he was born, in his
beloved Dowlais.
Dowlais House then became the Dowlais
residence of G. T. Clarke, Esq. who took over as the manager of the
Works.
Dowlais House was converted
to offices in 1894 after G.T. Clarke retired from the business
residence.
The alterations which
followed destroyed most of its older features as a private house,
with the exception an
attractive balustrade
running up a stairs. Its proximity meant that the House featured in
many photographs of the
Dowlais Works. Prior to
its demolition in the early 1970s, it was used as the employment
exchange.
Carolyn Jacob |
