Cylchgronau Cymru

Chwiliwch trwy dros 450 o deitlau a 1.2 miliwn o dudalennau

RICE MERRICK (RHYS MEURUG) of COTTRELL by T. J. HOPKINS SITUATED about half a mile to the west of the village of St. Nicholas and the same distance to the north of the main A48 road, the stately old home of Cottrell would be a very prominent feature of the landscape if it were not surrounded on three sides by so many fine and luxurious trees. Older in- habitants of the locality remember it as the seat of Alfred Donald Mackintosh of Mackintosh, chief of the Clan Chattan, whose wife, Harriet Diana Arabella Mary, was the daughter and heiress of Edward Priest Richards, Plasnewydd, Roath, and also the heiress, through her mother, of the Tylers of Cottrell. The couple spent much of their long married life (1880-1938) at Cottrell. Throughout this period the mansion enjoyed the reputation of being one of the foremost country seats of south Wales but since the death of Mrs. Mackintosh in 1941 and the subsequent sale of the Cottrell portion of her estate it has remained unoccupied, except for some use by Glamorgan County Council during the last few years of the Second World War and im- mediately afterwards. It is now in a very bad state of repair, and one wonders what its ultimate fate will be. Whatever may become of it, the site will always be revered by historians of Glamorgan on account of its associations with Rice Merrick (Rhys Meurug), the sixteenth-century landed gentleman, attorney and scholar, who wrote a work which he called A Booke of Glamorganshires Antiquities. It was published by Sir Thomas Phillipps at his private press in Middle Hill, Worcestershire, in 1825, but is best known in the second edition which was edited and published by James Andrew Corbett in 1887. It is still of great importance to all students of the medieval lordship and the sixteenth-century shire.