Cefntilla Court

The original house at Cefn Tilla dates from 1616 and is recorded as the manor house of the Oates family.[1] During the English Civil War, the Parliamentarian general Thomas Fairfax established his headquarters at Cefn Tilla while laying siege to Raglan Castle, some three miles to the north. In August 1646, the terms of surrender by the Marquess of Worcester were signed "in the dining room of Mr Roger Oates' house of Kevntilla".[2] By the 18th century, the court had become a farmhouse, and when, in the 19th century, it was bought by Crawshay Bailey, the ironmaster, as part of his Monmouthshire estate at Llanfoist, the house was derelict. In 1856 Bailey sold the house to the Memorial Committee which had been established to commemorate the life of Lord Raglan.[2]

FitzRoy Somerset (1788-1855), was born at Badminton House, the youngest son of Henry Somerset, 5th Duke of Beaufort. The Beauforts were the hereditary owners of Raglan Castle, but had abandoned it in favour of Badminton in Gloucestershire, after the castle's slighting in the Civil War. Enlisting in the British Army in 1804,[3] Somerset fought in the Napoleonic Wars, attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel and serving on the staff of the Duke of Wellington at the Battle of Waterloo.[4] He subsequently followed a political career and was raised to the peerage as Baron Raglan of Raglan in the County of Monmouthshire in 1852.[5] In 1855 he was appointed a full general and commander-in-chief of the British forces during the Crimean War.[6] He died in 1855 and was succeeded by his second son, Richard.[6] In 1858, a group of the late Lord Raglan's "friends and admirers and comrades"[1] purchased the house and estate as a memorial to him and presented it to Richard and his heirs in perpetuity.[lower-alpha 1] Richard engaged Thomas Henry Wyatt to undertake complete rebuilding of the court in a Tudor style.[1]

The Cefn Tilla estate passed by descent through the Raglan family, until the death of FitzRoy Somerset, 5th Baron Raglan in 2010. He bequeathed the court, its estate, and its major contents to his nephew Henry van Moyland of Los Angeles, while the title passed to the 5th Baron's younger brother Geoffrey.[8] This led to a legal dispute between family members, at the conclusion of which the Raglan collection of military memorabilia, and many of the contents of the house, were sold at auction.[9][10][11] In 2015, the house itself was sold.[12][13] The court is a private residence, but is available for hire as a wedding venue.[14][15]

Memorials to members of the Raglan branch of the Somerset family can be seen in Church of St John, Llandenny.[16]

The house is built of Old Red Sandstone. John Newman, in his Gwent/Monmouthshire volume of the Pevsner Buildings of Wales describes Wyatt's design as "asymmetrical from every direction but not memorably grouped".[1] Wyatt enveloped the original 17th century building in his 19th-century reconstruction, but traces of the older house are still visible.[2] The interior retains the original Jacobean architecture in the hall; it has an "unusual early Renaissance" hall frieze[1] which came from Usk Priory. The frieze was decorated in the 1930s by FitzRoy Somerset, 4th Baron Raglan, the antiquarian and historian of Monmouthshire, and the author, with Cyril Fox, of the major study of vernacular architecture in the county, Monmouthshire Houses.[1]

Cefn Tilla Court is a Grade II* listed building.[2] The forecourt walls on the entrance frontage, and the coachyard, have their own Grade II listings.[17][18] The park surrounding the house is listed Grade II on the Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales.[19]

• Bradney, Joseph (1992). A History of Monmouthshire: The Hundred of Raglan, Volume 2 Part 1. Academy Books. ISBN 1-873361-15-7.
• Newman, John (2000). Gwent/Monmouthshire. The Buildings of Wales. Penguin. ISBN 0-14-071053-1.