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Col Edward
Nanney-Wynn of Maesyneuadd, Llanfendigaid – and
Farthings Hill
This corner of Sussex can boast a good number of
families with lineages to be proud of; the Burrells,
Shelleys and others, some still going strong and
others, sadly, with pedigrees cut short, have provided
plenty of material for local historians to pore over.
Their histories and their houses are familiar, and
their names well-referenced in august publications
such as the Sussex Archaeological Collections and
Lower's Worthies of Sussex, that compendium of past
movers and shakers published in the nineteenth
century. They have been extensively written about, and
the shelves of local libraries are weighty with the
earnest works of today's researchers.
But just as interesting, perhaps more so in a way, is
to discover from time to time a member of an ancient
line, with no roots in Horsham, who has lived in the
town and then moved on. The family background of such
folk lies elsewhere, but for a while – perhaps just a
year or two, or maybe longer – they have settled here,
and by doing so have added a little to the flavour of
our own history. They come from old stock, often with
a background full of colour and incident, all of which
adds an extra dash of spice to the more familiar fare.
Such characters as Sir Eustace Fitzmaurice Piers, from
a long line of Irish baronets, doughty supporter of
women's emancipation, and resident in Horsham in the
1900s, have been profiled before, as has the Macleod
of Macleod, 23rd clan chief of that name and one of
Britain's greatest landowners, who decided to live in
Kerves Lane for some 20 years. An Irishman, a Scotsman
– and now a further discovery; a Welshman, with a
family history as long and as worthy as any of the
others, and who again lived in Horsham, before
returning to Merioneth to claim his inheritance.
Any student of Welsh history will be familiar with the
name Nanney-Wynn, but on the face of it Horsham is a
most unlikely place to find a member of that family.
Imagine my surprise when, working through a 1950s
street directory in search of the occupant of a
particular house in Broadbridge Heath, I came across
by chance someone called Nanney-Wynn living at
Farthings, on Farthings Hill (a largish Victorian
house, now a veterinary surgery). Through my own
interest in matters Welsh the name was well known to
me, but I must say I was at a loss to understand its
presence here in Horsham, and so I thought to dig
deeper, and in doing so, and thanks to help from the
family, I am now able to tell a little of the story of
Colonel Edward Roger Nanney-Wynn.
His family reaches back at least to the time when
Norman influence was just making itself felt in Wales,
and his surname is an amalgamation of two of Wales'
great and old families, the Nanneys of Nannau and the
Wynns of Maesyneuadd (and elsewhere), both significant
landowners in their day who came together in marriage
in the early eighteenth century. Nannau, as we know it
now, is an eighteenth century house, set in the hills
behind the market town of Dolgellau, and in the very
finest part of Wales (I speak from conviction, and was
born there), but it has long been a seat of power,
with a long and sometimes violent history. The Nanneys
were there in early times, and took their name from
the place. They were also of royal Welsh descent, with
a line that took them back to Cadwgan, Lord of Nannau
and younger son of the King of Powys (to a Welsh
historian this is heady stuff). The Wynns, though not
royal, were no less illustrious. They could trace
themselves back to one Osborn FitzGerald, from near
Tywyn on the Merioneth coast, another great lord and
one who played his part in Llewelyn the Great's wars
against the English in the thirteenth century. Among
other properties, the Nanneys owned Llanfendigaid, a
Merioneth house which is still in the family, while
the Wynns held Maesyneuadd, near Harlech, now – in the
ways of things today – a country house hotel.
The tangled branches of the Wynn family stretched all
over North Wales, and its central core was at Gwydir
Castle, near Llanwrst. In a country of castles this
one is, I think, the most evocative of all; neither
large nor imposing, in the way of Caernarvon or
Harlech, but most definitely packed with atmosphere,
in a way the grander ones are not, with fine
panelling, large and smoky fireplaces, intimate rooms,
old timbers and stone walls.
But some of the fine panelling is lucky to be in the
Castle at all; a few years back a curious curator
opened up a number of long-neglected packing cases in
the Metropolitan Museum's warehouse deep in New York's
Bronx, and discovered lengths of ancient oak
panelling, all carefully labelled and untouched since
the 1920s. William Randolph Hearst, in one of his
periodic forays through Europe, had extracted the
woodwork from the then owner of Gwydir, along with
many other European treasures, and carted it all off
back to America, destined for his own grandiose dream
castle on California's Pacific coast. But in the
meantime other things must have distracted him, and
the crates never got beyond New York. Thanks, however,
to the diligence and co-operation of the Metropolitan,
and much to the delight of today's owners of Gwydir,
the panelling is now back where it should be. Horsham
folk venturing north into Wales could do no better
than visit Gwydir, where they will be assured of a
warm welcome and some noisy peacocks.
But I digress. Let us now return to Colonel Nanney-Wynn.
He was born at the family home of Maesyneuadd in 1907,
and was destined from the start for a soldier's life.
After spending his childhood on the hills and beaches
around Harlech, he was educated at the Imperial
Service College, Windsor, and later the Royal Military
College, Sandhurst. It was here that he first showed
an aptitude for the developing field of electronics,
and this ability won him a subject prize at Sandhurst
– new technology from an old pedigree, as it were.
Like his father and grandfather before him, he had a
successful military career, and served with the
British Expeditionary Force and the Signals Division
of the Seventh Guards Brigade. He was stationed in
Canada for a while and saw active service in
Palestine. In 1950, at the age of 43, he retired from
the Army with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, and was
able to make this move thanks to the financial freedom
afforded him by the receipt of an inheritance from one
of his godfathers (who was shared, incidentally, with
Lord Baden-Powell).
It was at this point, and before the death of his
mother in 1957 when he moved to Llanfendigaid, that he
came to live in Horsham. I had puzzled as to why, for
the town did not seem a natural choice for a man used
to grand Welsh houses and many acres of hillside – but
the answer was, after all, straightforward. His wife
Marjorie hailed from these parts, and she was the
daughter of Major W Freese Sheffield DSO, a Loxwood
farmer. After many Army postings, and with a young
family of three daughters, and relatives close by, the
locality must have seemed sensible. Their three
daughters were Mary, Alice and Victoria, and the
family lived at more than one address in the area.
Schooling was also local, and Alice remembers Heron's
Ghyll and Parkfield, the one on the edge of the Forest
and the other at the north end of Horsham Park, but
both now long gone, and replaced by many smaller
houses.
But we must be grateful, must we not, that Farthings,
their home on Farthing's Hill, is still there.
Precious few spacious Victorian houses, with their
tempting gardens, have been left unexploited by the
developer. Those of us who remember Horsham in the
1950s and earlier recollect a landscape very different
from that of today. There were plenty of green spaces
then, and even in those days there were fields not far
from the town centre – and mellow brick walls, behind
which lay many a secret garden and orchard.
On his return to take up his Welsh inheritance,
Colonel Nanney-Wynn was kept busy with many of the
roles that his background had fitted him for. He was
appointed Deputy Lord Lieutenant of his home county in
1958 and was High Sheriff in 1967. Additionally he
took a keen interest in the Cadet Force movement, and
was County Commandant for Merioneth and Montgomery
between 1957-69, as well as Assistant Chief
Commissioner for the Welsh branch of the St John's
Ambulance Brigade, in recognition of which he was
created a Knight of St John in 1980. My uncle, a
fellow Deputy Lord Lieutenant for Merioneth, saw a
good deal of him in the post-war years, and remembers
him as a courteous and delightful man, 'one I was
always pleased to meet'. He also remembered 'he came
from a very old family and had much to be proud of,
but he was also a humble man in the best sense of that
word'.
He died in 1982 at the age of 75, at his ancestral
home at Llanfendigaid., a house which has now been
passed down to his grandson - so there is continuity.
He was a man much loved and respected throughout the
county, and despite his ancient pedigree and sense of
tradition, we have seen that in his own particular
field of expertise he was willing and able to master
the exciting new world of electronics. A good thought,
and a pleasing way to end this profile. While Horsham
cannot, of course, claim Edward Roger Nanney-Wynn for
her own, we should at least be grateful that he had an
association with our town, along with the likes of Sir
Eustace and the Macleod - all of whom, through their
long and historic pedigrees, have added a little extra
to the Horsham cavalcade.
My thanks to the Nanney-Wynn family for their help in
the writing of this profile, and in particular to
Miles Wynn Cato, his grandson, family historian and
author of 'Old Blood of Merioneth'. |
