Llandaff - Brynderwen photos

Llandaff - the City within a City

Brynderwen, Fairwater Road - click to enlarge an image

Brynderwen was built by John Prichard for Mr Evan Lewis, a colliery proprietor. He had a large family and lived there for forty years. Then John Llewellyn Morgan, the son of David Morgan, the founder of the David Morgan stores in Cardiff and Penarth, brought his family here in 1907. It was demolished in the 1980’s and Hardwicke Court was built.

There was said to be much rivalry between the Morgans and their neighbours, the colliery owning Insoles, as the Morgans were considered to be ‘in trade’.

Margaret Morgan recorded her childhood memories of life at Brynderwen on an audio tape in conversation with Lisbeth David. It was a house with many servants. They had ‘a cook, a kitchen maid, a parlour maid, a housemaid, a nanny and a nursery maid, who all lived in. There was a head gardener, an under gardener and a garden boy, who lived in the village, a chauffeur and a governess.

The parlour maid would be responsible for the drawing room, the dining room, and the library, which included cleaning the silver. (There was table silver, which had to be cleaned and polished after every meal.) The housemaid would be responsible for the upstairs rooms, and every week, both maids would turn out the rooms, which probably caused more dust than it cleaned.’