Qualla: Grave of David Lloyd George

Grave of David Lloyd George: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eirian Evans, CC BY-SA 2.0. There is no headstone. The man who led Britain through the second half of the First World War, dismembered the Ottoman Empire, signed the Treaty of Versailles, gave women the vote, and was widely considered the most consequential British Prime Minister of the twentieth century before Churchill - the man buried in Llanystumdwy is buried not under a monument but under a boulder he used to sit on as a boy. The stone came out of the Afon Dwyfor, the river that runs through the village where he grew up. After his death, an oval enclosure was built around it. The design was by Clough Williams-Ellis, the same architect who built Portmeirion an hour up the coast. The whole thing was finished by March 1946, less than a year after Lloyd George died.

Image: Eirian Evans | CC BY-SA 2.0

Grave of David Lloyd George: Born in Manchester, Raised in Llanystumdwy

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jimellis123, Public domain. David Lloyd George was born in Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester on 17 January 1863, where his father William George was a schoolteacher. Within months the family moved to Pembrokeshire. William died of pneumonia the following year, leaving the widow Elizabeth and her three childre...

Image: Jimellis123 | Public domain

Grave of David Lloyd George: The Coalition Premier

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Llywelyn2000, CC BY-SA 4.0. Lloyd George became Prime Minister in December 1916 by displacing the Liberal premier H.H. Asquith in the middle of the war and leading a coalition with the Conservatives. He stayed at Number 10 until October 1922, when the Conservatives pulled out of the coalition and forced him...

Image: Llywelyn2000 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Grave of David Lloyd George: Frances Stevenson Commissions the Architect

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data, CC BY-SA 3.0. Lloyd George's second wife, Frances Stevenson - who had been his personal secretary for thirty years before becoming his wife in 1943 - was suddenly a widow and, as the Dowager Countess Lloyd-George of Dwyfor, the person responsible for his memorial. She had already worked with C...

Image: Nilfanion, created using Ordnance Survey data | CC BY-SA 3.0

Grave of David Lloyd George: Boulder, Pebbles, Englyn

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Hillas, CC BY-SA 2.0. The design is one of the most personal funerary monuments in Britain. The central feature is the river boulder under which Lloyd George is buried - a massive water-rounded stone he had favoured as a sitting place by the Dwyfor. The boulder rests on a plinth decorated with pebbles...

Image: David Hillas | CC BY-SA 2.0

Grave of David Lloyd George: Dutch-Afrikaans by the River

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The architectural historian Andrew Saint has noted, with some bemusement, that the style of the entrance arch reads more 'Dutch-Afrikaans' than Welsh vernacular - the curving lintel and the simple massing more reminiscent of Cape Dutch buildings than of Snowdonian cottages. Willi...

Image: Public domain