FANS of the ITV drama Downton Abbey may be surprised and delighted to find out that the inspiration behind the series lies in Radnorshire.
Grade-II listed in 1993, Penybont Hall in Llanbadarn Fawr was the inspiration for the setting of the series created by writer and actor Julian Fellowes.
His grandmother Emily Mackintosh – a distant relative to our very own reporter, Emma Mackintosh – lived on the estate as a child and would tell her grandson about her days there.
Her father Patrick Mackintosh worked for the estate owner John Percy Severn, a wealthy businessman.
Pat is described as a tough, bright, hard-working man who worked his way up the ladder to become estate manager of 4,000 acres.
Along with his wife Betsy and four children, he occupied a cottage on the Penybont estate and they sometimes helped out up at the big house.
One of his children, Emily, when she was in her old age was to give Julian Fellowes the inspiration for Downton Abbey.
“It is a very interesting place,” said local historian and retired vicar the Very Reverend Geraint Hughes.
He retired to the area in 2000 and wrote a book on the history of the village, including a chapter on the hall, which also has links to the prestigious Ormathwaite family.
In the Comprehensive Gazetteer of England and Wales, 1894-5, the entry for the village reads: “The parish abounds in ancient entrenchments.
“Castell Cymaron is the site of a castle which belonged in the 12th century to the Earl of Chester and in the 14th century to the Mortimers and is opposite an ancient British, double-ditched camp, called the Gaer.
"Lord Ormathwaite owns nearly the whole of the parish and has a seat here.”
The hall itself was constructed some 150 years previously by the banker John Price, who built up a sizeable estate, including a manor in Abbey-cwm-hir and properties in Radnorshire and Ludlow.
He was survived by one daughter, Mary Ann, who in 1811 married John Cheesement Severn, a London-born barrister and one-time MP who had land in Llanbedr, Painscastle and Michaelchurch in Radnorshire.
They had three daughters and one son, John Percy Severn, who inherited the estate in 1875.
John, who is the model for Downton’s Earl of Grantham played by Hugh Bonneville, was not only a landowner but a director of two railway companies, a captain of the Knighton Volunteers and a magistrate with a reputation of being firm but fair.
He extended the home to 60 rooms in 1885.
The Rev Hughes said: “During the time of John Severn, when there was the wedding of the daughter of the house, they roasted an ox for the villagers.”