In the 6th Century Tewdrig, king of Gwent (or of Glywysing, or quite possibly of both) abdicated in favour of his son Meurig, in order to live out his life as a hermit. However, he later answered the call to return and lead Meurig's army against Saxon invaders. He was successful, but was badly wounded in battle near Tintern. He died at Mathern.
Meurig granted the lands around Mathern to the Bishopric of Llandaff in memory of his father who, having died defending a Christian kingdom from pagans, was considered a martyr and a saint. As well as the church of St Tewdric's, an episcopal residence was built. The palace grew in grandeur over the centuries and remained a residence of the bishops for more than a thousand years. (1939 postcard)
However, the last bishop to live there died in 1705 and in the late 18th Century it was partially demolished, with the land and remaining buildings being let out for farming. This engraving is from the early 19th Century.
In 1894 the architect and garden designer H Avray Tipping (later the archictecture editor of Country Life) purchased the much-reduced property. By the turn of the century he had renovated and enlarged what had remained (1905 postcard)
In 1910 the house and gardens were featured in Country Life
Tipping, seen here in the loggia in 1910, had been influenced by the garden designs of, among others, Gertrude Jekyll and so laid out the gardens at Mathern in the style of the Arts & Crafts movement
A wider view of the paved garden and loggia (1910)
The west side in 1910, with a Banksian rose that grew thirty feet in two years
Tipping at Mathern in 1904, with Lady Celia Congreve.
A lifelong friend, she would later be awarded the Croix de Guerre for bravery whilst serving as a nurse on the Western Front, and later still would write the enduringly popular "Firewood Poem"
Looking west towards the garden shed (1910)
Looking east from the garden shed (1910)
Tipping canalised surviving medieval fishponds to create a stream as part of a water garden (1910)
The yew arbour (1910)
The conservatory (1910)
Following the death of his mother in 1911 Tipping let the house before selling it in 1914 as his next and overlapping project, Mounton House, approached completion (1910)
Mathern Palace housed Belgian refugees during World War I before becoming a private house again in the 1920s
(postcard, probably 1910s)
In 1957 it was acquired by RTB, the owners of Llanwern steelworks, for use as a guest house, and subsequently passed on to British Steel following nationalisation
(the east front in 1910)
Mathern Palace in 2010 when owned by the Corus Group,
a subsidiary of Tata Steel.
In 2014 it once again became a private home
