This gorgeous ruin has been sat crumbling away in old parkland for just over a century now, and it sure is intriguing! The mansion and the land around it had once been a huge tourist attraction in the Georgian era, offering woodland walks, pleasure gardens and high views over the nearby river.
Often houses like this stay in the same family, being passed down from generation to generation, but Piercefield is different. Instead it's been sold over and over, as numerous people have tried to make the most of it only to pack up and bugger off for various reasons, until finally in the 1920s the last owners just abandoned it entirely.
Here's how it looked in 1920.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
With a horse racetrack nearby, I have heard stories from people who say that their ancestors, as youngsters, actually snuck into the abandoned mansion in the 1930s to watch the races from the top floor, which is pretty cool. That's some vintage urbex right there, not that they would have referred to it as such. Just think how lucky they were to explore this place back when it had floors and structural integrity.
(Image not mine, obviously)
On a personal note, Piercefield is important to me because my partner and I came here the day before their stockholm syndrome kicked in we decided to get together. It was a great day. I didn't really think I had much to offer in a relationship, but then men on Facebook say that wiping our bums is "woke" so in the modern age, adequate has somehow become exemplary. Yippee.
Piercefield was not my partners first urbex. That honour actually goes to a ROC bunker that I covered on my blog years ago. But this is the first time we'd gone to an abandoned place that was new to both of us. It's sort of fitting for Piercefield's history too. As a former tourist magnet, it has featured into the memories and personal histories of thousands of people across the centuries, and now it's part of two more.
Let's slip inside!
In a building with no windows and barely any walls, you can pretty much take your pick of entry point. The side wings are a good a place as any, having now devolved into walled gardens.
Based solely on descriptions found in the diaries of former guests, I've been able to ascertain that the side wings of Piercefield were the library and the music room, although I have no way of knowing which is which.
But this means that once upon a time this room may have been lined with book shelves, perhaps with a seating area and table near the fireplace.
The history of Piercefield is deep and convoluted, and at times contradictory the further back you go. It's possible to look back far enough to predate the house entirely and still find plenty to talk about. Let's start with the name.
One source mentions that the name "Piercefield" comes from St Pierre, but an older source mentioned that before the Norman conquest, a man named Sir Pyrs had a house here named Cwrt Pyrs, which is Welsh for Pyrs Court.
After the Norman conquest this land fell into the hands of the Walter family, who allegedly held it for twelve generations. They weren't always the Walters, of course. The first use of the surname was a man named "John ap Walter," meaning "John, son of Walter." His father was Walter ap Bleddyn, and his father was Bleddyn ap Cynaethwy. It seems that John ap Walter had a son in 1450 who was christened "John Walter," and it transitioned into a permanent surname. Imagination wasn't their strong point. Every generation of this family has a John Walter.
By the early 1600s the land of Piercefield was in the hands of the latest John Walter and his wife Bridget. They had seven children. Their eldest son, John, was heir to Piercefield. His brother Henry was apparently big in Puritan circles but I don't really know much about that. He was apparently set to inherit Piercefield if anything happened to John, but everyone was a little bit iffy about that prospect.
They had a sister, Susanna, and of the entire family, it's only Susanna's son Eldad who I've been able to find an image of, which is sad.
(image not mine, obviously)
Eldad Walter was a merchant and clothier in Somerset, and actually had nothing to do with Piercefield, although he no doubt did visit here since his family members owned it.
Tracing the Walter family tree has led me down a rabbit hole of confusing and contradictory dates, mainly because there's so many John Walters. Seriously, you have nine months to think of a name and the best thing you can come up with is John?
Eldad is at least a step in the right direction, even if his name is just Spanish for The Dad. At least it's original.
From what I've read their initial house here was a black and white Tudor building that a later John Walter enlarged in the 1630s. Another extension was added in 1700. And then in 1727, for reasons unknown, John Walter sold it to a man named Thomas Rous, ending twelve generations of Walter ownership.
Thomas Rous was born in 1680, and he was in his forties when he moved into Piercefield with his wife, Jane.
The Rous lineage are all MP's with ties to the East India Company. Thomas and Jane's grandson was buddies with Clive of India. Thomas and Jane's daughter, also called Jane, married the former MP of Bristol and slave fleet owner, Thomas Coster. I'll throw in an image of him just to break up the wall of text.
(Image not mine, obviously)
It's hard to know whether Thomas Coster ever set foot in Piercefield. You'd think he would, seeing as he was married to their daughter. But she died in 1720, a year after giving birth and seven years before her parents moved in, so she didn't even see this place. Presumably, if Thomas Coster was a decent bloke, he'd bring her child to meet its grandparents. But he was also rich enough to pay someone else to do it for him.
Thomas and Jane's other child, imaginatively named Thomas, was seventeen when his parents moved to Piercefield. I can't find his marriage records but seeing as he didn't have a child until 1739, and these rich folks were big on producing an heir reasonably swiftly, I'm guessing it was around then. In which case he likely did live at Piercefield until then.
When Thomas Sr died in 1737, and Jane followed in 1739, Thomas Jr sold Piercefield. I guess he wasn't as attached to it as they were.
Interestingly, despite being an estate owned by people getting filthy rich from colonialism, and despite the records of Piercefield being expanded by the Walters, an article from 1892 says that at this point it was barely more than a farm house, and it was enlarged by subsequent owners.
Who left that bag there? Ruins the vibe a bit.
Valentine Morris purchased Piercefield from Thomas Rous in 1740. He was born in 1678, and made his fortune from a sugar plantation in Antigua. He also claimed to be descended from the Walter family who originally owned Piercefield, but I haven't been able to verify that. I did attempt to trace his family history back, and found that his father John Edward Morris was a Caribbean buccaneer against the Spanish, and that he drowned at sea in 1688. John's father William Morris was also lost at sea in 1682.
Valentine Morris married twice, his first wife dying in 1714 . In 1720 he married his second wife, Elizabeth Wilmot, who moved into Piercefield with him. His children from his first marriage were all adults by the time they moved in, but his children with Elizabeth Wilmot were still young.
Frances, the eldest daughter, was nineteen, Sarah was seventeen, and Caroline was eleven. Valentine Morris had a son too, who he must have hated because he was also named Valentine, inflicting that name onto a whole new generation.
Valentine Jr was thirteen when the family moved to Piercefield.
I managed to find two images of Valentine Morris, and both look very different due to the age range. Some say that the older portrait must be the older Valentine, because it depicts an older man. The flaw in that logic is that both men grew old.
(Valentine Morris painted by John Smart in 1765)
This image is often said to be the older Valentine Morris, because he looks older than the other depiction of him. But it was painted in 1765, over twenty years after that Valentine Morris died. This has to be the younger one.
Daddy Valentine died in 1742, having not inhabited Piercefield for that long at all. His son inherited it, but being fourteen he was still under his mother's thumb for the time being. She died in London in 1761 so evidently she didn't stick around once her son became an adult. Valentine had the house to himself.
In 1748, he married Mary Mordaunt, a woman said to be "of great beauty and intelligence but little fortune."
Translated from rich toff, that means she's hot for a peasant.
The second image of Valentine was also painted in 1765, and looks very different. Clearly some artistic liberties were taken.
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(Valentine Morris painted by Allan Ramsay in 1765)
It's said that Valentine didn't actually start living at Piercefield until 1753, at which point he took to developing the grounds around the estate, which were predominantly farmland, into a massive pleasure garden and beauty spot open for tourists. He laid out walks through the woodlands, viewing platforms overlooking the river, and he created things like grottos and caves, and even a bathing house just randomly plonked in the middle of the woods. He had such a passion for improving the land that when faced with some straggling branches from a tree that needed cutting off, but was growing from the side of a cliff, he actually tied a cord around his waist and descended fifty feet to do the job himself after his workmen refused. That cliff was known as "Lovers leap" afterwards, perhaps because of his commitment to the land that he loved.
He was very much ahead of the curve too, because with the French revolution and the Napoleonic wars, travel to the continent was actually falling out of fashion in the late 1700s and early 1800s. People began looking for local attractions, and Piercefield park was there, waiting to be appreciated. Valentine was also immensely generous to those who happened to come visit, and it's said that his pantry was always open to the poorer in the community.
A couple of notable guests are the poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who described the pleasure gardens as "a godly scene" and the scientist Joseph Banks who described Piercefield Park as the most beautiful place he had ever visited. People came here to get married too. Piercefield Park hosted many a wedding across the late 1700s.
Predating photography, there are no photos of the parkland. But luckily plenty of artists have depicted the parkland in its glory days.
(painting of the parkland by David Cox, 1842)
In 1760, 26 structures were said to be in the park, including the follies, caves and grottos. This was scaled down to nine by 1800, indicative of a change in attitude by subsequent owners.
Beyond creating expansive parkland, Valentine Morris was a big believer in road improvement. He actually spoke to the house of commons, saying that there were no roads in Monmouthshire, and that they travelled in ditches. In his quest to improve the roads he actually took to maintaining them himself, often to the chagrin of the local gentry who owned the land that needed improvement. We kinda need this attitude today. A man can own as many slaves as he likes if he sorts out the potholes, right?
As far as colonialism goes, Valentine owned plantations on Antigua in the Caribbean, along with 284 slaves, but his projects back in Britain made him a rather absent owner, only going there once in 1754.
In the 1770s, Valentine's gambling, political dealings and his over-generosity actually bankrupted him, so he and his wife headed for the west indies in 1772 to be around their slave plantations and hopefully bounce back. They didn't. Admittedly while he did become governor of the Caribbean island of St Vincent, and he did put so much effort into its aesthetic that it was said that he had "created another Piercefield," he wasn't good at the whole governing thing. St Vincent was in a bit of a tumultuous time anyway. The British colonists had captured it from the French colonists, and the native Caribs were very much of the opinion that they shouldn't have any colonists, and these Brits should take their tea and fuck off. So Valentine was embroiled in what's known as the "First Carib War." And let's face it, it's never good when a war has the word "first" in its title.
And then the island was taken back by the French. Their empire in tatters, Valentine and his wife returned to Britain. Heavily in debt, he was thrown in prison, while she was taken to a lunatic asylum after a suicide attempt.
Today Piercefield is in ruins but there are still remnants of fireplaces in the walls that give it some character. Once this would have been home to generations of families, and their servants.
Valentine Morris was forced to sell Piercefield and all of his possessions. Wikipedia says that Valentine Morris sold it in 1779, but it actually seems that he initially tried to pay off his debts by renting it out first. Records show that the Rev Daniel Augustus Beaufort and his wife Mary rented Piercefield for a bit in 1782 and 1783.
Daniel had been born to French parents in 1739, but was actually a rector on Ireland between 1765 and 1818, so it's kinda interesting that he'd rent out this place for a bit with his wife. Mary found the house ugly and not suited for the grandeur of the parkland. No doubt it was Daniels interest in architecture and topography that led them to a house surrounded by pleasure gardens, and no doubt it was Marys dislike for it that prevented them from stopping long.
The family actually moved to London in 1789. I can't see that being much of an improvement.
(Daniel Beaufort, artist unknown)
Daniel and Mary Beaufort's children are all historically significant in their own right. Their eldest daughter Fanny was born in Ireland in 1769, and would have been fourteen when the family were living here. She had been quite well educated and accompanied her father on archaeological tours.
In 1798 she married the inventor Richard Edgeworth, becoming his fourth wife and subsequently was a year younger than her own step-daughter Maria, who was a successful novelist. Apparently they became best friends. Fanny also became an accomplished author, publishing several novels.
Unfortunately the only image I can find of her is diddy.
(Fanny Edgeworth, artist unknown)
Fanny's younger brother Francis had been born in 1774, and straight away we can see that rich family eccentricity shining through gloriously, because Fanny is often short for Frances. The Beaufort's had named their first two children the same name, gendered differently.
Francis was nine when the family lived here, but he grew up to be a navy admiral and a successful hydrographer, joining the East India Company's navy in 1789, which must have been shortly after his family had moved to London. He was only fourteen at the time but he seemed to have found his calling. He was absolutely a brilliant mind, spending his time mapping the coasts and seas of the planet to make naval travel safer, and also measuring depth soundings so that he could map seabed topography. He also came up with a reliable tide table for the British coastline. Today there are still echoes of his legacy. Just north of Alaska, we have the Beaufort Sea named after him, and just off from Antarctica we have Beaufort Island.
Bizarrely, he never learned how to swim.
(Francis Beaufort, painted by Stephen Pearce)
But alas, for all his brilliance he was tortured by guilt. He devised his own form of written code for his journal entries, and when this was eventually deciphered, historians discovered that after his first wife died in 1834, he entered into a three-year sexual relationship with his sister Harriet. His journal entries were wracked with guilt over this. If only they'd lived in Telford, it would have been okay. In the end he went for the next best thing, and married Honora Edgeworth, his step-niece. She wasn't blood related, so he managed to keep it in the family without the scandal.
Harriet, who later changed her name to Henrietta, was four years younger than him, born in 1778. She went on to become a botanist and an author, writing a book aimed at young people to teach them about botany. Rather unusual for the time, she didn't actually include any illustrations in her book, because she wanted children to be encouraged to go outside and experience nature rather than just passively looking at it. It's a lovely thought. I want to be inspired. I just can't get it out of my head that she was shagging her brother.
The youngest Beaufort, Louisa, was born in 1781 and would have been a very small child when they lived here. She went on to become an antiquarian, painter and writer. She allegedly had some input into Maria Edgeworth's novel, "The Absentee."
So all of these Beaufort's, historical figures in their own individual ways, stayed at Piercefield fleetingly in the 1880s. Although the impact it had on their lives is minimal, their impact here was felt by the locality, because nearby is the "Beaufort Hotel."
After they left, a man named William Bush started renting Piercefield, shortly before Valentine Morris, wracked by debt, put it up for sale.
Valentine Morris then died in 1789. His obituary said "Mr Morris resigned all his claims on this world to the power of the grave."
(View from Piercefield park, painted 1834 by William Collins)
At the time it was written that "even the gleanings of Mrs Morris's toilet were sold to purchase bread."
A curious phrase, that leads me down the most exciting digression to date.
I happen to love etymology. Word meanings do evolve over time, and nowhere is this more apparent than the toilet. The word "Toilet" derives from the French word "toilette" which means to wash oneself, with"toile" being the cloth used to wipe. Incidentally this is why you have toiletries too. In the 1500s the word "toilet" had expanded its meaning to become the cloth that was placed over the dressing table, because that's where one prepared themselves for the day. In the 1500s, dressing tables were even referred to as "Toilet Tables." But then the word spread to mean the dressing room itself, and then any sort of private room near the bedroom, and eventually this narrowed down to the lavatory. What a journey. If you're ever in the 1500s don't ask anyone if you can use their toilet for a quick shit.
Basically in 1779 the "gleanings of Mrs Morris's toilet" probably just refer to the stuff on her dressing table.
With the walls now bare it's actually possible to see how the house has been modified over the years prior to its abandonment. There's a curious blend of masonry here. And if we look at the upper floor, there's still a door in the upstairs door frame. One day someone turned that handle for the last time.
This area is the entrance hall. Check out these old fancy beams. They seem to be the last clue of any grandeur to this place. Presumably these once supported a balcony that overlooked the hall. Now there's scaffolding holding them up, which would suggest someone once cared about preserving what was left.
This room is just off the entrance hall. Apparently it was either the drawing room or the dining room. Towards the back of the entrance hall were the breakfast and billiard rooms.
It sure is crazy to think that this room is where a family once sat around the dining table.
Someone has scrawled "Help" on the wall, and it looks marvellously sinister. It's the only graffiti here, too, but it's perfect.
Of course, Valentine Morris himself probably didn't see this particular entry hall. He sold Piercefield to a banker named George Smith, and in 1792 he began expanding the house into the mansion that (barely) stands here today. However it's difficult to rule out which parts of the building would still be familiar to Valentine. It's said that George incorporated the original house into the mansion, turning the area where Valentine lived into the servants quarters. A publication from 1803 mentioned that one of the chimneys dated back to 1553. The entire mansion is a bit of a mishmash.
But the mansion was never completed during George Smith's ownership of Piercefield, so I don't know for sure if he ever actually lived here.
What I can gleam from journals of the era is that the changes he made weren't too popular with visitors to Piercefield Park, with many saying that the new mansion didn't fit the surroundings at all.
But to his credit, George Smith did give the walks and gardens a bit of a sorting out, what with them falling into neglect during Valentine Morris's time in jail. Despite these improvements, George earned the ire of tourists everywhere by only allowing the gardens to be open to the public on Thursdays.
But given that Piercefield was a perpetual construction site at the time, I think that's pretty reasonable.
George Smith's big claim to fame is really just that he created his daughter, the linguist and absolute genius Elizabeth Smith. Did she ever come here to see the empire that her father was building? Probably.
She was born in 1776, and by the time her family had Piercefield she was already mastered French, and had began learning Italian. By the time she died she had also mastered Spanish, German, Arabic, Persian and Latin too. Prior to her death in 1806 she had started learning Irish and Hebrew too. Among her possessions were lists of words in Chinese, Welsh and some African dialects. Throughout her life she just never stopped learning. What a woman.
(Image by J G Wood, published in 1809)
While George no doubt fully intended on completing the new mansion of Piercefield, his luck ran out when war was declared with France in 1793. I don't know the ins and outs, because I'm not a banker or an economist. But his bank went bankrupt and he was fucked. He had no choice but to sell Piercefield. An advert in the paper described it as "Recently built but not quite finished. Suitable offices, excellent gardens with extensive walks, pleasure grounds, romantic woods in a most beautiful park embellished by the river with command of magnificent views."
Piercefield was sold in 1794 and George Smith joined the military to take his anger out on those that had ruined his chances of having his dream home.
(View from Piercefield Park, unknown artist)
The next owner of Piercefield was a chap named Mark Wood, who had made his fortune in Bengal as a slave owner. He'd initially joined the British army before going to India with his brother in 1770 when he was just twenty. He married a woman named Rachel Dashwood in 1786, and then had five children. Mark appears to have also had a child with one of his slaves too. This sort of thing apparently happened all the time in the colonial era, but Mark Wood actually surprised me, because in 1805 he purchased his illegitimate daughter a house.
With his health failing, he eventually returned to Britain, became an MP and purchased Piercefield.
Piercefield would have made a fine family home for Mark's real family, had it been finished.
Luckily he was a man with a plan. His plans were not very popular.
Firstly he enclosed the park with a high stone wall, to keep out the peasants, and then just to confuse anyone who was making a trek here to check out the gardens on a Thursday, he decided that they would only be open on Tuesdays and Fridays. There are numerous journal entries saying that this ruined their holiday because they timed their visit to Piercefield wrong. That little scamp. But even on Tuesdays and Fridays, the public were only permitted access with a servant escort, removing their freedom to roam the grounds at their own pace.
In 1795 the side wings were added to the mansion to serve as the music room and library. An article from 1796 said that he was expecting to move in within five weeks.
So Piercefield was complete, and publications at the time continued to reflect how ugly it was compared to the land around it.
Nevertheless, in 1796 Mark Wood moved in with his wife and five children, Eliza, Sarah, Alexander, Mark and Charlotte. I have pictures of a whopping NONE of them, and it's annoying.
Here on the wall of the entry hall we can actually see where the grand staircase once was. It's said that the walls around the stairs were covered in tapestries that had once belonged to Louis XVI, depicting African landscapes. A publication from 1805 described the floor of this room as being black and white marble.
It's crazy to think we're looking at the same place.
Mark Wood sold the estate in 1802, and I can't help but wonder if it was deaths in the family that prompted the move. His wife died in 1802, so maybe he felt like a change after that.
The new owner brought Piercefield into its most interesting era, purely because he was black, and black people really didn't own mansions in 1802.
Nathaniel Wells was born into slavery. His father, William Wells, owned a sugar plantation on an island in the Caribbean. William fathered a number of children with his wife, but only one of those was a boy, and he died in 1758. Before he could make another boy, his wife died the following year. At which point, William did what many owners of slave plantations did at the time, and hooked up with his slaves.
And unlike many owners of slave plantations, William actually looked after the ones he got pregnant, and even had the children baptised. Nathaniel was born to a slave known only as "Juggy," although once she was given her freedom she adopted the name "Joardine."
Surprisingly during the colonial era there was an attitude that black slaves, if given freedom, funding and sufficient education, actually could be "trained" to behave like a civilised British person. This attitude slowly phased out after slavery was abolished, which makes it very ironic really, because Nathaniel could not have climbed as high as he did if he'd been born after the abolition of slavery. But as Williams only male child, he was sent to Britain to stay with his uncle and aunt, and receive a proper British education. He became the richest black person in Britain, but he wouldn't have been able to achieve this at all if he been born after the abolition of slavery.
There aren't many photos of him, but he does appear on a mural in the nearby town hall. He's the black one.
(Image credit unknown. Nathaniel was added later, which is why he's behind Valentine Morris)
William Wells died of dropsy in 1794. He left money to all of his illegitimate children, but most of it was left to Nathaniel. Nathaniel inherited his plantation empire, becoming something of a curiosity, a black owner of slaves. The truly mad thing about this is that for a brief time, Nathaniel was the legal owner of his own mother. His uncle, Rev Robert Wells, did try to nab the inheritance for himself, because nothing says Christian Priest louder than owning human beings, but he lost. And it was a lucky break for Juggy, because Nathaniel did set her free by 1802, and helped her buy a house, and and in a rather eyebrow-raising moment, got her two of her own black slaves, named Cuffy and Venus.
It sure is interesting, and certainly an angle of colonial history I've not seen before. Not only do we have black people owning slaves, but we have former slaves owning slaves. Despite setting a few free, records reveal that Nathaniel Wells still had 262 slaves by 1817.
But Nathaniel really was an absentee slave owner, preferring instead to hire managers for his plantations. In these cases it was often the managers who were cruel, and often Nathaniel didn't have any knowledge. But it didn't go unnoticed by the press, and when a manager gave a slave 39 lashes and put pepper water into their eyelashes to make them scream, the media actually reported on it negatively, and it was used as an example for why slavery needed to be abolished. It's worth noting, Nathaniel could have suppressed the publication, but he let the exposure happen.
It's strange to look at these ruins now, and think that this may have been Nathaniel Wells billiard room, or drawing room. He only exists as a mural to me, but he was a real person and this was his home. He once showed this room to his guests with pride, proud that a man of his race could achieve what he did.
Nathaniel's race didn't hold him back in the dating world either. In 1801 he married Harriet Este whose father was chaplain to King George II. They initially moved to Bath, but after a trip to Piercefield and a stroll around the pleasure gardens, Nathaniel fell in love with the place, and a price was settled with Mark Wood over dinner.
Once settled at Piercefield, Nathaniel became a church warden in 1804 and sheriff of Monmouthshire in 1818, making him Britain's first black sheriff. He also joined the local yeomanry where he rose to the rank of Lieutenant. The most noteworthy action he saw under these careers is from an attack from striking miners in 1822.
Curiously Nathaniel's skin colour was rarely mentioned. He was seen as different, but not inferior. The only time I've seen it come up is in 1803 when he was described as "a man of very gentlemanly manners but so much a man of colour as to be little removed from a negro."
Which is hilariously petty. That's just rich toff for "You may be a nice guy, but you're still black." It's evocative of those guys on Facebook who comment on transgender girls photos to point out that they were born male. "I may be wanking right now, but that doesn't change the fact that you have a prostate."
But I digress.
The truth is, had Nathaniel ventured out to visit his plantations, he would have been treated differently. His slaves would have resented him as a traitor to his kind, and the other slave owners would have resented him for not staying in his lane. Keeping his distance might seem like the actions of a careless owner, but for his situation it was a wise move. He was able to rake in the money anyway but stay in Wales where he could live as a prince.
Nathaniel was apparently very particular about who was allowed on his land to see his gardens. They were open on Tuesdays and Fridays, although the house itself was off limits for his families privacy. He introduced a signing-in book for guests, and anyone on the land outside or the permitted days would get bollocking, but it's said that he never turned away anyone who wrote in advance, even if it wasn't on a designated visiting day.
Admiral Nelson apparently stayed here in 1802, with his lover Emma Hamilton, and her husband. Apparently it was a consensual polyamorous arrangement, but that's not really the point. Admiral Nelson is one of the greatest admirals in the history of Britain, gaining fame and adoration for his role in the Napoleonic wars. And he's stood in this ruin, before it was ruined. He's ate here, slept here, and probably made love here. That's so cool.
Speaking of making love here, Nathaniel Wells doesn't seem to have ever had his dick outside of his wife. For a solid decade, all Harriet did was pump out babies, and they were all born and raised here at Piercefield.
William Meyrick Wells was born here in 1803, followed by Harriet Claxton Wells in 1804, Nathaniel Armstrong Wells in 1806, Charles Rush Wells in 1807, John Tighe Wells in 1808, Delia Frances Wells in 1809, Henry Lewellyn Wells in 1810, Henrietta Maria Wells in 1813 (starting to slow down and run out of name ideas), Grace Emily Georgiana Wells in 1814, and Caroline Angeline Wells in 1816.
Now obviously with a black father, it's safe to assume that these kids were all mixed race, but unfortunately I've not been able to find images of them. I have found photos of the generation after them, and all of Nathaniels grandchildren and great-grandchildren look white. But I guess that's to be expected since their only available suitors would also be white, so eventually the dark complexion would be bred out of them. At least I think that's how genetics works.
I'm pretty sure there was a Jeremy kyle episode about a white couple who had a black baby. Maybe they were descendants of Nathaniel.
(One of Nathaniel's great-granddaughters named Lilias, and her son Ted. It seems they lived in South Africa. Photo not mine, obviously)
In 1819 Nathaniel had actually tried to sell Piercefield after discovering dry rot. Evidently this was not the ideal place to raise an army, which Nathaniel's cock was apparently capable of doing. Piercefield house was a very loud, very active place, with a ten children and one knackered mother. Harriet had spent a decade operating solely as a baby factory, and she must have felt she deserved a break, because she died in 1820. She was only 39.
Two of her sons, Henry and William, also passed away in 1822 and 1823, at the ages of 12 and 20. They were born here in Piercefield and they died in this house too. Of course the Youtube ghost hunters won't find them because they can't reads it on Wikipedia beforehand.
Nathaniel remarried in 1823, this time to a nineteen year old named Esther. I guess a 43 year old man marrying a nineteen year old isn't illegal, especially since the age of consent was actually twelve in the UK until 1875 when they raised it all the way up to thirteen (It was raised again a decade later, except in Telford) but really the weird thing about Nathaniel and Esther's age gap was that she was the same age as his firstborn son. Legal or not, that would be weird.
Nathaniel somehow failed to realise that having ten babies in rapid succession might kill a woman, and got to making ten more with his new wife.
Little Esther was born in 1824, followed by Julia Charlotte Wells in 1827, Edward Owen Wells in 1828, and Augusta Matilda Wells in 1829.
But Nathaniel's' original brood were busy too, which is great because this house was probably getting a bit cramped. Throughout the 1830s, Harriet, Charles, John and Grace all got married, and decided to leave their dad to his little baby empire. Nathaniel Armstrong was also living elsewhere by 1835. But that didn't make the house any quieter because Nathaniel and Esther got to making more children.
Arthur Montague Wells was born in 1832, Adelaide Wells was born at the beginning of 1834, and Catherine Louise Wells was born at the end of it, so the couple didn't even stop for breath there, Madelaine Wells was born in 1835, Cecilea Wells was born in 1837, and Matilda Elizabeth Wells was born in 1839.
What the hell is Nathaniel Wells doing? Does being Britain's only black sheriff do wonders for the libido? I suppose it would make you feel awesome. But that's no excuse for trying to populate the planet.
God must have thought so too, because Adelaide and Madelaine died in infancy.
Poking around ruins is fun, but the cool thing about Piercefield that sets it apart from your average ruin is that it's actually possible to access the cellar. While the upper levels are completely destroyed, everything is mostly structurally stable below ground.
You're damn right we went down there.
Well, structurally stable is an exaggeration. This thing will come down if I so much as sneeze. But it's awesome nonetheless.
And I was pretty proud of my partner too. Squeezing through a hole to access a cellar beneath a barely-extant building is fairly standard for a seasoned urbexer, but for a beginner this sort of thing is rather balsy.
If we look at Piercefield on the 1841 census, there are eleven members of the Wells family living under this roof (back when it had a roof) and the oldest daughter Delia was only five years younger than her step-mother, which is kinda weird. Henrietta married in 1843, and Delia and Julia both died here at Piercefield in 1845 and 1850, at the ages of 35 and 23. On the 1851 census there were only eight of the Wells family still living here, although this census also includes the servants.
This was their house too, and they probably did more in the cellar than the rich family ever did, so let's talk about them.
33-year-old Mary Hern was the housekeeper, eighteen-year-old Ellen Leys was the laundry maid, 32-year-old Emma Jones was the cook, and nineteen-year-old James Cowley was the footman.
Slavery was abolished in the colonies in 1833, but it was translated into a form of enforced "apprenticeship" so that owners could hang on to their slaves for another four years while they received compensation for their loss of their property. Thee sugar plantations had been declining anyway, and Nathaniel only had 86 slaves by 1833, but he still got a hefty payout for them.
But this did mark a slight change at Piercefield, as Nathaniel began to charge people three shillings to visit the pleasure gardens. A tourist journal entry dated 1847 said "I shall say to anyone wanting to go to Piercefield- don't!"
Oh dear. The thing is, Nathaniel was passed giving a shit. He left Piercefield in 1851 or 1852, and the family moved to Bath. Caroline Wells, shortly after turning 36, died of a "congestive lung disease" that with hindsight we can guess was probably TB.
Two weeks later, at the age of seventy-two, Nathaniel died of a fever, listed as the obsolete medical term "Synochus" on his death certificate.
He left all the furniture at Piercefield to his widow, Esther. He had actually outlived most of his children, but left all his paintings, books and estate maps to his eldest surviving son, Rev John Tighe Wells.
Unfortunately John was probably schizophrenic. It's not the best illness to have in the 1800s if you want adequate support and sympathy, although being rich probably saved him from being carted off to an asylum. His own obituary in 1869 referred to him as "The Crazy Priest." It told of how he had spent the years paranoid that someone was trying to kill him. He had no suicidal tendencies but depended on someone to be there with him to keep his imaginary enemies away. Unfortunately he snuck away from his keeper one winters night, and was seen splashing around in a pond, but dismissed as a drunk. At around 11pm he began knocking on someone's door asking to come in. The owner told him to piss off, and he was found dead in the snow the following morning.
Piercefield was put up for sale, with the understanding that the house would be demolished if the trustees thought this would make it sell easier.
Check this out! The shelves are numbered. This isn't graffiti, these are original features. In a place as ruinous as this, it's pretty awesome.
In the years that he spent in Bath, Nathaniel Wells rented Piercefield Manor out to various people, but their time here was brief. The last tenant was a man named John Russell, from Broseley in Shropshire.
John had been born in 1788, and wasn't originally rich. He worked as a tobacco pipe maker, and in 1817 he married a woman named Mary Downes who was considerably more well off than he was. In fact her parents strongly disapproved of their daughter marrying a peasant. But John promised them that she would never live in poverty, and he stayed true to his word. It was said that all he touched turned to gold. He climbed the corporate ladder and actually ended up owning the pipe works that he worked at, along with a brickworks, and a few other properties.
They had a number of children. Sussanah was born in 1818, Mary Ann in 1825, Jane in 1827, Ellen in 1828 and then one son, John in 1832.
In 1836 he purchased a colliery, and then in 1839 he took over an ironworks with his buddy George Randle Hookey, who subsequently ended up marrying Susannah the following year.
(John Russell, artist unknown)
By 1842, John Russel had a contract to provide coal to the East India Company. He had 250 adults working at his colliery, fifty boys under the age of eighteen and fifteen boys under the age of thirteen. He justified this recruitment necessity, saying that men were too big to fit down some of the narrower parts of his mines, but added that anyone under ten was of no use to him because their strength was insufficient.
On the surface it seems that John Russel was a successful businessman, but his collieries were notorious for accidents and deaths, to the point that he had to bring in workers from Somerset, Dorset, Gloucester and Wilshire, because none of the locals wanted to work there. In 1846 an explosion killed 35 men, and more were killed in explosions in 1849 and 1853.
John purchased Piercefield in 1855, and also became sheriff of Monmouthshire, fitting in to his predecessors former job as well as his house.
It's unlikely that any of his children ever lived here, because they were all adults and married by then.
The walks around the gardens were allegedly closed to the public, although some reports tell of Mary showing guests around. Perhaps there were just correct channels in place now, rather than the freedom to just show up and dither.
The 1861 census actually shows that Piercefield had more servants than Piercefield had ever seen before, even when Nathaniel lived here with a billion kids. John and Mary lived here with 24-year-old butler, Samuel Collard, 38-year-old coachman George Vaughan, 49-year-old housekeeper Ann Hardwick, 29-year-old lady's maid, Louisa Higman, 50-year-old cook Martha Smith, and 12-year-old housemaid Sarah Natt.
And it's usually hard to trace the movement of servants, and where they went after this. While the higher ranks tended to retain staff for longer, jobs like housemaids attracted youngsters but usually had a high turnover. But documenting them does help to paint a picture of this place full of activity. All these people walked these halls.
In 1860 an explosion at John Russell's colliery killed 146 people. This brought his time at Piercefield to an end as he sold it in order to set up a trust for the victims families. To his credit, there aren't many employers who would sell their mansions to do that. Apparently he didn't actually move out until 1867 but adverts for his horses and livestock were in the papers as early as 1861.
What a lovely bloke.
In the far corner of the cellar is this little tunnel. It seems to be for a pipe. Unfortunately it was just a little too small for me to squeeze down.
It sure is intriguing.
The final owners of Piercefield were the Clay family. Henry Clay was a banker and brewer from Burton on Trent. The Clay's are also a bit of a success story because they also started out as working class. Either his father or grandfather had managed to purchase a pub in Burton on Trent, and became quite successful. But the local toffs regarded them as upstarts, and outsiders, because they hadn't inherited their wealth like all the "normal" rich folks. Henry wanted to join the upper class and decided that the best way to do that was to have a fresh start here at Piercefield, where nobody knew that he used to be a peasant.
He did quite well. One of his granddaughters married an earl, and one of his great granddaughters married Queen Elizabeth's uncle. Not bad for a family of pub owners.
The 1871 census is the first one to list Henry living here, along with his wife Elizabeth and their servants, consisting of Samuel Waugh, Charles Burton, Frances Pilmer, Martha Staples, Lucy Turner, Mary Tyler, and two teenagers, Elizabeth Lansdown and Erwin Moulton. None of their individual jobs are actually specified. They're just listed as domestics. But even so, for a family that aspired to be upper class, that's an impressive number of servants.
Henry and Elizabeth's children were already adults by this point, so they didn't move in with them.
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(Photo of Henry Clay not mine, obviously)
Here's a photo of Henry Clay. Someone (not me) has attempted to enhance his face using AI and it has had terrifying results. Henry Clay now looks like an alien in a human suit. If you have any old photos of your family members, here's some advice: Don't do this to them!
Henry lived here until his death in 1874. Elizabeth continued living here, and their son, also Henry Clay, came to live here too. This Henry Clay was very much involved in his community, and became known as the Grand Old Man of Monmouthshire.
Elizabeth Clay is not without her claim to fame either. In 1846 she made the paper when she dislocated her clavicle in a carriage collision. Her two daughters, Caroline and Emily, were also with her, but they only suffered a bit of bruising. They were children at the time, and children are annoyingly indestructible. I have managed to find a photo of Caroline. Unlike her father, this one has not been edited to look like a Thunderbirds character.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
According to the 1881 census, Elizabeth was still the head of the household at Piercefield, but she wasn't alone. Her son, the Grand Old Man of Monmouthshire, also widowed having lost his wife in 1872, came to live at Piercefield. He brought his three children, Henry Hastings Clay, Charles Leigh Clay, and his infant daughter Edith. In 1881 they still had a legion of servants here, but Martha Staples and Samuel Waugh are the only ones retained decade earlier. This census does give us a bit more detail and clarifies that Martha was Elizabeth's Lady's Maid and Samuel was the butler.
There's also Sophia Hartley the governess, no doubt in charge of whipping Edith into shape and singing about the sound of music. Frances Ivins is the housekeeper, John Godsall is the footman, Mary Chambers is the child's maid, Mary Rivers, Caroline Hopkin and Hannah Parker are just regular housemaids, Harriet Wright is the kitchen maid, and Lucy Thurston is the scullery maid. In regards to age, they range from 18 to 68.
It seems that the Grand Old Man of Monmouthshire opened up Piercefield's parkland to the public once again, although journals from the 1870s don't speak fondly of the view anymore. After some flooding it seems that there was a lot of mud deposits, and the river was referred to as a filthy ditch. It's a rapid decline from the praise and adoration flung at it in centuries gone by. Perhaps the human race was getting grumpier.
The park hosted regular agricultural shows, and other events. At one point there was a Victorian larping event where volunteers re-enacted the Crimean war. It had 1,500 volunteers and a crowd of 12,000 onlookers. I wish I could have seen it.
They also hosted regular cricket matches, and the Clay family always got involved. In fact the family seem to have a natural talent for sport. Edith became a really successful golfer, being referred to as "the most prominent lady golfer in Wales" in an article from 1921. Her brother Charles had a son who became a footballer, and ended up having his face printed on some collectable sports cards that were available with Ogden Cigarettes in the 1920s.
(image not mine, obviously)
Elizabeth Clay, the matriarch of the family, died in 1887, and Henry Clay became the head of the household. But his son, Henry Hastings Hay, also seems to be lined up to inherit everything. By the 1890s, he'd moved his wife Mabel into Piercefield.
Here's Elizabeth's photo.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
Elizabeth's photo has also been edited by someone to try and enhance her face too. It's not as scary as the one of her husband, but still, it's not good.
Samuel Waugh was still the butler in 1891, but Martha the ladies maid had departed, now out of work seeing as her lady was deceased. Mary Chambers had progressed on to become the housekeeper. None of the other servants were the same at this point. Henry Bell was the new footman. There's a 19-year-old Thomas Owen whose occupation on the census is faint but looks like it says "Hall Boy" whereas 24-year-old Ellen Gardiner was the head cook, and 31-year-old Emily Turner, 18-year-old Fanny Bailiss and 20-year-old Mary Rosser were housemaids.
By 1901, Henry and Edith were the only Clays left at Piercefield, but Samuel Waugh was still the Butler, and Mary Chambers was still the housekeeper. The footmen roles were occupied by George Jones and William Mathias. Alfred Reece is listed as the chamber groom, which outranked the footmen but was still under the butler on the servant hierarchy. Harriet Cottenham was the cook, while Sarah Lewis, Ellen Williams and Florence Madley are maids.
By 1911 nothing much had changed, although the butler was dead. According to his obituary, Samuel Waugh died in 1903 at the age of 91, while still working at Piercefield. He'd apparently been employed by the Clay family for 65 years.
Mary Chambers had outlived all of the servants. The new cook was Louisa Senior, and the new kitchen maid was Daisy Marsh. Herbert Baribule and Robert Connor were the footman and groom. Mary Bennet and Melinda Bryant were housemaids.
I've managed to find one image of Henry Hastings, the Grand Old Man of Monmouthshire. It's poor quality, but it kinda works for his Grand Old Man vibe. He looks like God.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
Henry Clay died in 1921, and rather than leave the house to Edith, who had lived here for her entire life, the house passed on to his eldest son, Henry Hastings Clay. It was all downhill from there because he didn't really want it. He already had a house, and as nice as Piercefield was, it wasn't very modern. It had no bathrooms, for starters, and it had no electricity at a point where electricity was all the rage. Modernising Piercefield would be an expensive project, and Henry Hastings had death duties to pay after the war, so he just decided not to bother. Piercefield was stripped of anything of value, and then just abandoned.
I do wonder what Edith thought of this. The house was legally the property of her nephew, but she had grown up here and lived here as an adult. This was her home. Edith was the only member of the Clay family to live here throughout her life. She must have been sad to see it go.
I have found a photo of her, but it's not a brilliant quality, and I have no way of knowing who she is exactly because it's a group shot, but here it is.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
But before the racecourse could open, two ladies came forward, claiming to be descendants of Valentine Morris, the former owner of the land. They claimed that Valentine Morris had only leased out Piercefield house, and that it still belonged to the Morris family. For a moment it looked like Piercefield would be saved.
Unfortunately their lawsuit fell flat, and the racecourse opened anyway. Piercefield hall was left to fall into ruin.
The land was used by the military in the 1940s. They used the racecourse as an RAF base, while US troops used the crumbling remains of this house for their training for the Normandy landings, and allegedly also for target practice. And that's pretty cool, but I'm sure the former occupants, if they could see it, would be sad to see their once grand home blown to bits.
A few campaigns have been launched to save it over the years, but let's be honest, there's not much left to save.
(Photo not mine, obviously)
Here's Henry Hastings Clay, the man responsible for the current state of Piercefield House.
I'm sure anyone really emotionally invested can print this off and stick it on a dartboard, but honestly, what's done is done. If urbex has taught me anything, it's that bad things happen, and we can't do anything about it. Like famine, and abba.
Honestly I'm pretty happy to find this many photos of the Clay family.
There's one more stop before we head home, and that's the grotto!
I had wanted to check out the alleged "Giants Cave" too. I think the grotto and the cave are the last of the garden features. But it was raining and it was also getting dark. The grotto was cute though. It would have once had hundreds of shells covering the ceiling. but all that is long gone. It's crazy to think that this little hovel has been here since the Colonial Era. It predates the mansion. It's been enjoyed by every owner since Valentine Morris, and it's been a point of interest for thousands of Georgian and Victorian guests.
But that's all I've got. If you've read this far, then thank you. I know blogs are an archaic format on the modern internet, where AI and clickbait get pushed by the algorithms.
Piercefield was fun, and it made for a good early urbex for my partner. The cellar in particular is the most interesting part, but I just love anything underground.
Alas, as much as I love the history, it was exhausting to regurgitate alongside so few photos. I wasn't expecting to find so much from this ruin. I promise my next blog will be shorter.
If you do like my blogs for some reason, then perhaps you can stay updated by following my social media. It's a long shot because Zuckerberg hates people who actually make stuff, but you can follow my Facebook and my Instagram. As these platforms become more and more shit, you may want to jump ship. So I'm also on Bluesky, a pretty good Twitter substitute, and Vero and Cara, two adequate Instagram substitutes. Let's go populate good parts of the internet.
Thanks for reading.
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