This lecture brings together much previously unseen material, and looks at a number of long-demolished ‘gentleman’s houses’ in Cardiff. These grand houses usually had three or more large reception rooms and up to fifteen bedrooms. Some had one or sometimes two entrance lodges, as well as gardener’s cottages and stables, all set in extensive gardens. Many (although not all) of these were built during the boom in prosperity of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, on the then outskirts of the town.  By the 1930s, fast-expanding suburbs grew around these often large but labour-intensive mini-mansions, enclosing their grounds, and making them less desirable places to live.  One by one they found other uses, or were demolished and other, smaller houses built in their place.

Today they are often completely forgotten, with sometimes only a street name, the occasional mature tree or a boundary wall marking where they once stood. This fascinating talk will introduce you to a privileged Cardiff you probably never knew existed.