A model of perfect friendship - Open Table Chester remembers the Ladies of Llangollen

Sarah Ponsonby (left) and Lady Eleanor Butler (right), known as the Ladies of Llangollen, outside with a dog. Lithograph by J.H. Lynch, 1830s, based on a drawing by Mary Parker (later Lady Leighton), 1828 [Wellcome Collection]

LAST MONTH, members of Open Table Chester met for an afternoon of fellowship at the former home of the Ladies of Llangollen, two upper-class Irish women whose relationship scandalised and fascinated their contemporaries during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Joy Kendall was the group’s guide.

It was a glorious afternoon - the sun shone as the group settled on the lawn in front of Plas Newydd, Llangollen (also known as ‘the Ladies House’). We were able to enjoy the tranquillity and ambience of the house and gardens, on the outskirts of the Denbighshire town, just 40 minutes from Chester.

 We settled on the lawn in front of the house, near the old dairy, now home to a café serving drinks, snacks and cakes. We were later treated to cream teas by Yve and we talked, laughed and enjoyed the company of others, so welcome after the postponement of such gatherings because of the pandemic.

Plas Newydd house and garden

Some of us had booked an audio guided tour of the House - just before they left I gave a talk on how Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby came to arrive in Llangollen in the late 18th Century, defying the convention of the time by running away from Ireland to live together in rural Wales.

It’s a long time, and long overdue, since I prepared and delivered a talk such as this, especially to an audience with whom I have a special bond - Open Table Chester - who have helped and supported me with prayer and fellowship to overcome a difficult period in my life.

The subject is also very dear to my heart. I first discovered the delights of Plas Newydd in the late 1990s - when my American pen pal and her husband visited, I took them on a whistle-stop tour of the area, to Caernarvon Castle, Llandudno, and the tweed mill near St Asaph, where I saw a book, The Ladies of Llangollen by Elizabeth Mavor, so I bought it.

I was a frequent visitor to Plas Newydd and the grounds, taking time out for myself - not realising fully that these were the first small steps on my journey to allowing myself to eventually be fully myself as a gay woman! I’d take photographs and write poems in the stillness and tranquillity of the place, the large lawn, the walk through the trees down by the stream, reconnecting with my childhood, and entering into my imagination to try and see the Ladies of Llangollen in their time.

Both Ladies were from Anglo-Irish land-owning  families, and were near neighbours in Ireland during the Georgian period in the eighteenth century. They lived through the reign of the ‘mad’ king, George III and the American War of Independence against the British Empire. Lady Eleanor Butler was born in 1739, the youngest daughter of Walter Butler, head of the Roman Catholic branch of the Ormonde family who had been Irish nobility since the 14th century. Eleanor was educated in a French convent, and her home at Kilkenny Castle was only six miles from Sarah Ponsonby’s at Woodstock in the village of Inistioge.

Sarah, born in 1755, was a member of the Bessborough family, who became nobility in Ireland in the eighteenth century. Sarah was orphaned at an early age and without an inheritance, so she made her home with her father’s cousin, Lady Elizabeth Fownes and her husband, Sir William.

While at boarding school in Kilkenny aged 13, Sarah met Eleanor who was 16 years her senior. The two became close friends and corresponded for several years before deciding to leave Ireland and live together. Both were unhappy - Eleanor was being pressured to enter a convent by her Roman Catholic mother, while Sarah was receiving the unwelcome attentions of her guardian, Sir William Fownes.

Their first attempt to escape from their families was thwarted in March 1778 when they were overtaken at Waterford, both dressed in men’s clothes, and Sarah armed with a pistol. Family arguments and discussions failed to lessen their determination. Eleanor escaped again to stay with Sarah who swore ‘to live and die with Miss Butler’.

Eventually their families agreed that they could leave and, on 9th May 1778, Eleanor, now aged 39, and her companion Sarah, 23, left Ireland and their families for ever, to look in England for a suitable home where they could live together. They sailed to Milford Haven, accompanied by Sarah’s maid Mary Carryll, and toured Wales. On 25th May 1778 they saw Llangollen for the first time and thought it ‘the beautifulest country in the world.’

The two friends visited Caernarfon and searched the border country without finding a suitable location for a permanent home. They returned to Llangollen, spending the winter of 1778-9 at Blaen Bache Farm and, by the following spring, they were lodging at the Post Office near the Hand Hotel in the town. They settled in the cottage, then called Pen Y Maes [‘the top of the field’] which the Ladies renamed Plas Newydd [‘the new house’], which became their home for almost 50 years, where they enjoyed ‘a life of sweet and delicious retirement’ away from the fashionable life which they might have been expected to enjoy in Georgian society.

The porch of Plas Newydd, described as ‘a riot of fragments’

It is reported that they never spent more than a few days away from Plas Newydd during their lifetime. They would be invited to various neighbours’ homes, or to musical or theatrical evenings, but would always return home to their ‘silent and still’ cottage, however late, ‘by a delicious moon’ or the ‘light of Jupiter’.

They spent their days writing, reading, sketching and embroidering, and they busied themselves transforming the house and gardens to such an extent that they became as much a centre of attraction as the Ladies themselves. They added a Gothic library, and their biographer Mary Gordon described the porch and door as ‘a riot of fragments’ and the tiny entrance hall and staircase as ‘indescribably encrusted’. So too is the the Oak Room, with its  Spanish leather dated 1814 above the fireplace. They installed  a great deal of stained glass, and had a love of carved oak.

Behind the house they transformed the grounds into The Glen with rustic timber bridges, pools and cascades, A Gothic niche remains, with screen walls and seats, containing a font said to come from Valle Crucis, a former abbey in the nearby countryside. In front of the house [much altered since] there is part of the shaft of the eighteenth century Chester High Cross, and the Gorsedd Circle of stones dates from 1908.

They received many visitors attracted by their romantic story, ‘a model of perfect friendship’ - poems were written about them, and their actions and motives were discussed in correspondence between fashionable people of the day.

The Ladies were devoted to each other, called each other ‘beloved’, and read to each other most evenings. Sarah mostly read to Eleanor who suffered most of her life with severe migraines.

The three-sided memorial to Lady Eleanor, Mary the maid, and Sarah Ponsonby in Llangollen churchyard.

When their loyal maid Mary died in 1820, they erected a three-sided memorial to her in Llangollen churchyard, where they themselves wished to be buried. Inside the church is a monument to the Ladies created in 1937 by Dr Mary Gordon, feminist and author of the biographical novel The Llangollen Ladies. Its relief portraits were created from life using Mary Gordon, and Violet Labouchere, its sculptor, as models. The Ladies in their lifetime did not like to have their portraits painted.

Lady Eleanor died on 2nd June 1829 at the age of 90. Sarah remained alone except for her servants until she died on 8th December 1831 age 76.

I encourage you to visit the house and read more about the lives of Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, an intriguing story which I discovered when I began visiting this remarkable place, and immersing myself in the peace and solitude of nature within the grounds, contemplating, writing and painting, as the Ladies would have done.