Qualla: Big House, Landshipping

Big House, Landshipping: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On the afternoon of 14 February 1844, the river broke through the roof of the Garden Pit colliery and drowned forty miners in the dark. The Big House stood half a mile from the shaft, on the bank of the Cleddau, its drawing-room windows looking out across the water that had just killed them. Sir John Owen owned both the mansion and the mine. The thin rock ceiling between the workings and the riverbed had held for years - three or four feet of rock, with forty to sixty feet of sand and silt above. At half tide, it gave way. Of the fifty-eight people working below, eighteen escaped. The rest were never recovered.

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Big House, Landshipping: The House by the River

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Big House - also called Landshipping House - was built around 1750 by the Owen family of Orielton, who served as the local coal agents. Its stones were salvaged from an older ruined mansion further inland; even at construction, the house carried the memory of something that h...

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Big House, Landshipping: Rebuilt to Match Picton

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1830, Sir John commissioned the architect William Owen to transform the river house into something that could face Picton Castle across the water without embarrassment. Owen added a third storey to the western wing. He moved the entrance to the north facade, between two bow-fr...

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Big House, Landshipping: Garden Pit, 14 February 1844

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Garden Pit shaft was sixty-seven yards deep. Its galleries extended out beneath the estuary, following the Bright Vein coal seam. Above the seam, only a few feet of rock separated the miners from the river. Above that, the sand and silt of the Cleddau. The workforce that day ...

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Big House, Landshipping: Decline and Ruin

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Sir John Owen and his son Hugh were both Members of Parliament. Both seats required money. The disaster did not end the family's mining ambitions, but the cost of politics, combined with the long slow exhaustion of the seams, did. By 1857 they were forced to sell most of their ho...

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Big House, Landshipping: Partial Restoration

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 2002, the BBC series This Land followed Alun Lewis, his partner Sarah Hoss, and their children as they moved onto the site to begin restoring the Big House. They got the second bay partially rebuilt; the roof still needed work to be weatherproof. The cameras left. The work con...

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