Llanwern Park, an old estate to the east of Llanwern village, was purchased by Lewis Van in about 1630. Llanwern House was built around 1760 for Charles Van, replacing a late 17th century building
The park was landscaped in the late 18th Century
Charles Van had married into the Morgan family of Tredegar. His wife Catherine's father and three of her brothers were all Members of Parliament ...
... a status that Van himself,
after several unsuccessful
(and reportedly embarrassing) attempts, finally managed to achieve in 1772
Charles Van's daughter married Sir Robert Salusbury, 2nd Baronet,
who also became an MP, and High
Sheriff of Monmouthshire ...
In the late 19th Century the estate was leased, and later purchased, by industrialist (and MP) David Alfred Thomas (later Viscount Rhondda)
The house was restored, along with the creation of terraced ornamental gardens and a kitchen garden
A water channel ran the length of the garden
All the watercolours shown here were painted by Thomas's sister-in-law, Charlotte W Haig, in 1907
DA Thomas bred prize-winning Hereford cattle.
In this postcard from 1910 cattle graze in the park,
kept away from the house by a ha-ha
His only child, Margaret Haig Thomas, born in London, raised at Llanwern, was a prominent suffragette, campaigning for women's rights across South Wales.
She marched with the Pankhursts and once served time in jail, having attempted to set fire to a letterbox in Newport, but was released following a hunger strike
She worked for her father at the Cardiff headquarters of Consolidated Cambrian, and became chair of several companies, and a director of many more.
In 1926 she was elected as the first female president of the Institute of Directors
In 1915 Margaret accompanied her father on a trip to the USA on behalf of the British government. On the return journey their ship, the passenger liner RMS Lusitania, was sunk by a German U-boat off the coast of Ireland. They survived, in Margaret's case only just, whereas 1197 of their fellow travellers did not
On her father's death in 1918 Margaret became 2nd Viscountess Rhondda. In 1920 she founded, and from 1926 edited, the literary magazine Time and Tide - initially of the left, later more conservative but always feminist in outlook
Despite featuring many of the century's greatest writers it failed to sell in sufficient numbers. So Lady Rhondda single-mindedly underwrote it from her own, somewhat diminishing, fortune until her death in 1958
The house was demolished in about 1950.
All that remains is a brick-lined underground ice house.
A bungalow was later built on the site
Neither the ornamental nor the kitchen gardens survive in any form, having been turned over to agriculture
Llanwern Park Farm in 2009
