Six hundred years is a long time for one family to hold one piece of land. The grey-stone house at Carreglwyd on the northwest corner of Anglesey has been the home of the same lineage - Griffiths to Carpenter, by marriage and inheritance - since the early 15th century. The Tudors of Penmynydd lost it during the Glyndŵr rebellion. The Griffiths of Penrhyn picked up not just Carreglwyd but 27 other Anglesey estates whose Welsh owners had died in the fighting. The current hall went up in 1634. The family is still here. And the archive of letters, deeds, accounts and household notes accumulated over those six centuries is now lodged at Bangor University, where it forms the oldest continuous estate record in northwest Wales.
The name 'Carreglwyd' translates as 'grey rock' - carreg meaning stone, with lwyd a soft mutation of llwyd, the Welsh word for grey. Welsh place names usually do this kind of geographic work, describing landscape rather than commemorating people. The estate sits about a kilometre northwest of the village of Llanfaethlu, on rolling ground above Anglesey's western coast. The original 15th-century Griffiths house was a smaller structure than what survives today; the present hall was built in 1634 by William Griffiths, a Chancellor of the dioceses of St Asaph and Bangor, a Fellow of New College Oxford, and Master of the Rolls in Wales. He died of plague in October 1648, three years after losing his wife Mary.
Country estates grew by marriage, and Carreglwyd grew several times. In 1755, John Griffiths married Mary Trygarn, heiress to two neighbouring estates - the Trygarns of Llŷn and the Hollands of Berw. The couple's joined initials are still visible on a lead cistern dated 1763 in the gardens. By the 19th century the estate had been substantially remodelled and Richard Trygarn Griffiths owned it. His marriage to Emma Mary Carpenter brought in the connection to the Stanleys of Penrhos. Emma's daughter, the last direct heir, married Sir Chandos Reade and died childless in 1917. The house passed to a cousin and then a nephew of hers - and through that line, it has been owned by the Carpenter family ever since.
What makes Carreglwyd particularly important to Welsh historians is what is not on display. For six centuries the Griffiths kept their letters, leases, marriage settlements, account books, sermons, household lists and political correspondence. Most family archives this old have been lost to fire, neglect or division among heirs. The Carreglwyd papers survived effectively intact and were deposited at Bangor University in the 20th century. They include correspondence with Welsh princes, records of the 1407 Anglesey land settlements after the Glyndŵr rebellion, university letters from Oxford-educated Griffiths sons going back to the 17th century, and the agricultural records of a working Welsh estate through the Industrial Revolution. Historians describing the social fabric of Anglesey rely on these papers more than on any other single source.
Old country houses survive in the 21st century by finding new uses. Since 2010 Carreglwyd has hosted weddings, and since the same year it has been home to Gottwood - an electronic music festival now drawing 5,000 attendees who camp on the estate grounds for a long weekend in June. The festival director is Tom Carpenter, the current owner. The combination is strange and entirely Anglesey: the same lawns where Welsh princes once issued land grants now hold tents and a sound system; the Grade II* listed Georgian remodelling looks out on dance music. The house remains a family home for the rest of the year. The archive remains at Bangor. The 5,000 weekend visitors leave, and the place goes quiet again.
Carreglwyd at 53.36°N, 4.54°W, on a low rise about 1 km northwest of Llanfaethlu, in the northwestern quarter of Anglesey. From low altitude the estate shows as a wooded enclosure within otherwise open farmland, with the L-shaped stone hall visible at its centre. The coast of the Irish Sea is two miles to the west. Nearest airports: Anglesey/Valley (EGOV) 7 nm south-southwest, Caernarfon (EGCK) 17 nm southeast. The Holy Island skyline at Holyhead sits 10 nm to the southwest. In clear weather the Wicklow Mountains in Ireland show as a faint line on the western horizon.