Tredegar House National Treasures of Wales

The National Trust is Britain's largest landowner.

It has more than four million members

and it's as English as cream teas.

Or is it?

In fact it all began 100 years ago here in Wales

where it now cares for some of the greatest coastline,

mansions and countryside in the world.

This is a huge undertaking

but how are they coping in the 21st century?

I'm on a housing estate in Newport

but I'm looking for a rather different kind of estate.

It's well-known to the locals,

but still a bit of a secret to the rest of us.

This is the only National Trust house

where the neighbours have their own entrance.

A little local knowledge always helps, doesn't it?

It's known as the jewel in the crown of Newport -

Tredegar House.

Nestling in the heart of urban Newport,

perched on the shoulder of the Duffryn housing estate

and across the road from the M4 motorway.

We are right in the middle of urban South Wales.

This was the seat of the famous Morgan dynasty

before it was purchased by Newport Council

thereby earning its infamous nickname.

Welcome to what was once known

as the most expensive council house in Britain.

It has lived several lives.

Country palace to the aristocratic Morgans,

post-war girl's school,

and latterly, a museum run by the Friends of Tredegar House.

But now, National Trust Wales has borrowed it

on a 50 year lease from Newport Council.

The National Trust, surprisingly, only came here in March 2012.

It's definitely part of a strategy

because they're underrepresented in South Wales,

they don't have a lot of property and land around here.

They wanted to bring their expertise to this house.

This is not your standard National Trust property

so what are they doing here?

And why are they taking on yet another huge place?

National Trust Wales director Justin Albert explains.

We're very relevant to the north.

In the north of our country we have lots of fine, big properties.

Lots of land, lots of Snowdon we look after.

And actually, the proportion of people who are members

is very high, it's higher than many parts of England.

But most people in Wales don't live up the north,

they live down south, they live in Newport,

they live in Port Talbot, they live in Swansea, they live in Cardiff.

That's when I realised we didn't have much of a presence.

We weren't relevant, not because we didn't have anything to offer,

we had no properties there.

Tredegar House is a gem.

It's late 17th century, about 1670, a masterpiece in brick,

designed by that always reliable architect - Anon.

Nobody knows quite who the architect was.

But what is this magnificent palace doing in the

middle of the urban sprawl of industrial South Wales?

Well, in 1403 the Morgans built the original stone brick residence here.

Over the centuries they grew in wealth

and by the 1670s, William Morgan built the first ever

red brick mansion in South Wales.

The Morgan dynasty were the Kennedys of Wales,

they married into land and money.

They were in the right place at the right time to

capitalise on the Industrial Revolution.

And then in 1951, they ran out of heirs and sold up.

Curator Emily Price fills me in.

Do you have any connections with any of the Morgan Family?

Tredegar House and the Morgans are very unusual.

The last Lord Tredegar died childless.

There were connections with his widow for a time

and there are still branches of the family.

But essentially, there is no Lord Tredegar anymore.

You've had people come and claim things about this house?

We have had people in the past come and say, we own this house.

You mean they arrived... Did they have any evidence?

They claimed they did which is why we sent them to the legal department.

Did they actually, literally, knock on the door and say,

-we own this house, get out.

-Yes. Pretty much, yes.

The council managed to ward off fake Morgan descendants

for nearly 30 years, but the financial burden

of running such a large building became too much.

It's a huge conservation debt of several million pounds

and that liability was too much for the council to deal with.

And also they lost money every year.

What we can do in the Trust is inspire more people to visit,

more members to come here, and more visitors to see them,

therefore we can make enough money.

It's my gamble, our Trust's gamble, that we can make enough money

from our visitors and members to match how much it costs

to run the place - staff, volunteers, food, electricity, lights,

and secondly, maintain what we've fixed here.

Once you build a house it starts collapsing.

This has been collapsing for 400 years.

And the man charged with this mammoth task is

National Trust Wales' building consultant, Nathan Goss.

When I look at Tredegar House I look straight at the roof

and put my head in my hands thinking, how are we ever

going to be able to afford to do that?

The whole roof is on its last legs.

Even the chimneys are on their last legs.

Falling bricks, slates slipping off, lead work ripping, tearing,

there's just mass decay in the roof section, really.

And it's not just the big house.

There are restoration challenges throughout the estate.

These small, wonderful buildings behind me

they're on, what's called, buildings at risk.

Even though from the outside looking in they look fantastic,

you can't see any slipped slates, you can't see anything wrong with it at all.

So when you actually get inside those buildings

and get up into the actual roof space

the timbers are like Weetabix, they just fall to bits in your hands.

There's the most wonderful mushrooms and fungus growing in there.

So these buildings are really high priority for us as the National Trust

because we can't be seen as a leading organisation in Europe

or even in the world, and have buildings which are on the risk register.

It just isn't something we can do.

So what can the Trust bring to the table that the council couldn't?

We're saying with the ability of the National Trust,

we know how to run a conservation business so we're not...

We're going to use all our techniques and our staff

to make this a viable business.

The first step is to commission a two year investigation into the place.

This in-depth research will provide the blue print for what happens here

over the next 48 years.

Emily used to work at Tredegar House when Newport Council were in charge

and stayed on when the Trust took over.

The National Trust is a massive institution,

so did they all arrive at once in one huge bus or did they come bit by bit?

It's been gradual and it's continuing.

That's a pity. I rather like the idea of the Ealing Film

that there's a "beep, beep" and a coach turns up

and hundreds of people from the National Trust start running out going, oh!

But what have they looked at?

The ceilings, the furniture, the ceramics...

And that was all right was it?

I would worry about letting them in because they might come in and say

you've got death watch beetle here, my dear, we've got to redo the whole place.

A building like this is always going to have a bit of death watch beetle,

a bit of wood worm. My personal fear was they might turn around and say,

sorry, the house was only built in the 1970s!

-Luckily that didn't happen.

-We're going!

We don't want anything to do with this house. It's a fake.

-But they didn't say that?

-No, no.

'So it's not a fake but it is complicated.'

Now, this is very glamorous, isn't it?

'Downstairs they've inherited the oak panelled,

'late 17th century Morgan era with Victorian flourishes.

'Upstairs, it's a museum to the last family.

'While further down the corridor is a remnant of the time

'when Tredegar House was a school.'

BELL TOLLS

St Joseph's Convent took it over in 1951

and ran it as a school for 23 years.

Stephanie Evans is the conservation manager here.

This is a really interesting room from the National Trust perspective

because if you look around you can see so many different layers.

We've got this brown vinyl wallpaper

which we think was put in by the school.

We've got a concrete floor because the old floor fell down.

And then right in this very corner when some furniture was moved out

we found this fantastic wallpaper. We think it's dated to around 1750.

Apart from all these changes over the years,

there's another reason why this house is a difficult one to look after.

Here's Lady Katherine up here on the wall

painted by Augustus John, the famous Welsh painter.

He was a bit of a goat by all accounts.

It's rumoured the two of them had an affair.

He said, HE said, he found his subject

"a bit trying but it paid",

meaning that he made a bit of dosh by doing these society portraits.

This picture is here now because the widow

of the last Lord Tredegar decided that she would sell

a few of the pictures to Newport City Council to adorn the house.

It had become a school.

All the artefacts relating to the story of the Morgans had disappeared.

And so the Trust, and the council before them,

have had to reconstruct the rooms, imagining how

they might have been at any given time in 500 years of the Morgans.

Bryher Mason, conservation plan consultant.

It has been said it's a little bit like trying to do a jigsaw puzzle

when you've only got about 60% of the pieces

and you don't have a picture on the box. So it is quite a challenge.

The reason why it's hard to say exactly what went on in the house

is that records are incomplete.

So we might know an awful lot about what happened in 1788

and then there's huge periods of time where we don't know the answer.

So, for example, in the fabric of the building we can see

that there are changes that we don't necessarily at the moment understand.

So a good example is the way the staircase comes down

and enters the new hall here.

So you have a door case but it's not symmetrical.

The other thing that happens is this pillar at the end of the stairs

is in a rather strange place.

Normally you'd expect it either to end a bit further in

or a bit further out.

It's all a bit uncomfortable.

Another clue is in the plinth.

These dents in the stonework must have been caused by quite

a heavy object hitting against the stone.

That's not the kind of damage that really could occur

in this sheltered internal environment.

So what that tells is that this wall was once external

and the staircase is an addition to the building.

They may never know the exact reason for the change

but they'll record it and add it to the information they know

about this crumbling house.

I like this,

the battered window even though the draft excluder's left in.

You look through and you can see the entire restored courtyard out there

like something from the Loire Valley.

Beyond that is an avenue of trees.

Then you see the M4

and you get some sense of the way this house sits

in the middle of the history of South Wales.

And this is where the Trust can help.

It has a network of contacts who can, in some cases,

fill in the missing history.

We were very lucky. I think one of our supporters from the art world

who owned this portrait up in Edinburgh,

heard that the National Trust was taking on Tredegar House

and contacted us, and said he had bought this painting in a sale

and would we like it, which was fantastic.

It's a portrait of William Morgan who built the red brick house

here in the 1670s.

Something to note about William is he's dressed semi-like

a Roman emperor and there's a theme of the Roman Empire

going on in Tredegar House.

We've got carved busts of all the Caesars.

We also know from inventories there was a whole series

of paintings of Roman emperors in the new hall.

Everywhere you look,

there are rich, flamboyant decorations which demonstrate

the sheer wealth and power of the Welsh family that built this house.

Gorgeous.

These splendid putty lions fighting it out

to proclaim the majesty of the Morgans.

And in 1671, while a distant relative, the pirate Captain Morgan,

was laying waste to Spanish galleons on the Spanish Main,

they were acquiring more land here in Newport.

Land that stretched right the way down to the water and was

to later become extremely valuable as the shipping dock of Newport.

The Morgans made another fortune in the Industrial Revolution

and that is represented upstairs

where there's a new way of drawing attention to that story.

Welcome to the Red Room.

This room is representative of the bedroom of Princess Olga Dolgorouky.

She was Evan Morgan's second wife.

Absolutely beautiful woman and I've no doubt today

she would have been blessing the society pages.

We know this room is fairly accurate based on drawings and letters

that she supplied to various researchers,

even to the extent of where the furniture is in the room as we speak.

I understand though, as the marriage deteriorated

she finally ended up in the far left hand corner of the house

across that way, probably as far away from Evan as she could possibly get.

Oh, I see, right. Oh, dear.

The National Trust are telling the story of the house

in a different way here.

So, Mark, I mean, you tell people this as they walk through,

as a guide to give them advice.

We don't have audio guides here, it's down to you?

What we try and create in this house

is an atmosphere where people feel that they're part of the house.

The last thing we want to do is create an atmosphere where you feel

that you're guided through the house,

that you're not allowed in certain parts of the house

because of ropes and restrictions. It's your visit. It's your house.

You enjoy it, and we try to be there to give you what information we can.

Even more than hands-on, this place is bottoms-on.

Ah, excellent.

I can lie here in some comfort

and look up at a copy of a picture in the Palazzo Barberini in Rome...

and it's an extraordinary idea that I can do this.

And it's sort of...

This is not just touchy-feely National Trust,

this is feather bedding National Trust.

In some rooms, you can dress up

as different generations of the Morgans.

In others, there are board games or role play.

What do you say to people who say,

"Well, isn't this a little bit, sort of, touchy-feely fun,

"but not dignified enough for this house?"

I think it's still perfectly dignified.

It's people experiencing and finding out about the house

in different ways.

So, they are getting a different experience here

than they might get at another house.

Each property we have is intrinsically different

and each has a different role.

Powys Castle is a treasure museum.

Tredegar house in Newport is very different.

That's a community asset in many ways.

It's a fun place to run around and play,

and experience something you can't experience anywhere else.

Where we've got the opportunity here,

where we don't have hugely valuable pieces of furniture

that we need to protect, then we can allow the public

to engage with the room with a little bit more hands on.

There's no ropes, there's no boundaries. You can sit at the table,

and kids can have a fake dinner party,

and you can trust people with that.

We've lost nothing. Nothing's been nicked, nothing's gone.

Not everyone gets this.

It can be confusing for those more used to a traditional style

of touring a house.

When I sat down on this chair, just now,

a gentleman came up to me and said,

"I don't think you're supposed to sit down on the chairs -

"they might collapse."

But, in fact, I'm supposed to sit down on the chairs.

I think the rest of the people walking through

are a little bit too cautious to do that,

but the idea here is that I should join in the wedding feast

of William Morgan and Elizabeth Dayrell, over there,

and enjoy the plastic ham and cheese and the rubber quail.

But the point is that this is all intended by the National Trust

to bring in more visitors.

They have undertaken to increase the numbers

from 25,000 to 100,000 a year

and to boost the local economy by £1.5 million.

Some have suggested that they may be going too far.

Critics have accused the National Trust of "Disneyfication",

of using crude tactics to bring these places to life.

Are they dumbing down history in order to get more people in?

A question I put to Justin.

You don't see a point at which you say,

"Well, in order to square this circle,"

which is to get more people in,

"we have to make ourselves more attractive to,

"if you like, the lowest common denominator"?

Does that worry you at all?

Never use the term "lowest common denominator". I would use the...

We need to make ourselves attractive

to as many people as possible, to give those who wouldn't normally

want to come to what they perceive as a National Trust house

and be given a scone and a lukewarm cup of tea

and told, you know, by a volunteer they can't touch a bed.

That we don't want to have anything to do with.

It will piss some people off.

Some people are not going to like

that we're not the great conservative.

We're not going to have these ropes

and you talk in hushed tones in rooms.

They're not going to like it, but it's absolutely the way it should be.

There are boundaries in some areas.

Downstairs, we're got very much a hands-on feel.

We want people to engage with what's going on in the spaces

but, here, we hope that people can readily understand

that this is a piece of historic wallpaper

and we do have some explanation here and we do have some ropes.

Now, that is kind of contrary

to how we want to people to enjoy the rest of the house

but, in this case, that wallpaper is really significant

and every time we touch something like that,

it leads to speeding up deterioration.

And this is the crux for the National Trust.

They have said they have a kind of onion of a house.

Some ancient original artefacts,

some reconstruction and some relatively new stuff.

But what we try to remember is that all the layers are important.

So, you have to imagine yourself 100 years from now.

The school era, in the '60s and '70s,

would be probably almost as interesting

as perhaps the 17th century era.

So, we don't want to lose any of those layers.

Keeping the layers is, really, very important.

Things aren't that traditional in the garden either.

Tredegar House is part stately home and part municipal park.

There are 90 acres of parkland here,

most of which are open to the public all year round.

The Trust looks after it, along with the grounds of the house,

an 18th century formal garden, which is part of the paid visit.

It has been described to me, by locals in the past,

as an oasis in an urban jungle.

Steve Morgan, unfortunately no relation to the Morgan family,

grew up playing in this park.

Now, he's head gardener here for National Trust Wales.

There was a dig back in the late '80s,

when the council owned Tredegar House,

and they found evidence of this type of garden,

and what they decided to do was

recreate their own interpretation of it.

So this hasn't all come from the National Trust?

No, I mean, the council did do an awful lot

when they first took on the property in 1974.

They were heavily involved in the restoration of the buildings

and then that moved on to the gardens.

And it's quite unique.

I'm pretty certain this is the only one of its kind in Wales.

There is a strong relationship

between this house and the local people,

and it goes back to the Morgan family. It's tradition here.

The family were great philanthropists.

We know that a Labour leader,

speaking at the docks in the 19th century

said something along the lines of,

"Socialism will not flourish in Newport

"so long as Lord Tredegar is alive."

So, he was implying that Lord Tredegar was so generous

to the people of the area

that socialism had difficulty making headway.

Absolutely, and he was generous in that he gave land for parks,

for a technical institute.

We even have stories of him...

A young lady was widowed on the land

and he let her stay rent free for the rest of her life.

Is it possible for the Trust to step into Lord Tredegar's shoes here?

They've set up a number of initiatives to help

and involve local people.

We look after the social, the economic,

and the conservation benefit are what we look at,

and the social benefit is really key.

Other organisations aren't big enough to do that.

We can make decisions that don't necessarily make financial sense

but actually have great social, beneficial social impact.

One place they are trying to put this into action

is with an allotment scheme.

Can you manage?

The Trust have given over a plot of land to locals

from the neighbouring Duffryn estate to grow vegetables.

Is this philanthropy in the style of Lord Tredegar?

Or is it part of a sound business plan?

There are 3,000 potential visitors on this estate,

which is literally on the Trust's doorstep.

They've brought out a new thing now called a resident's pass,

which you pay a £5 fee for a year,

which entitles you to go in to house as many times as you want

and it does save you a lot of money.

They will have to reach new customers

if they are to meet their own visitor target

and here, Justin feels, they have an image problem.

They view us as being, in Wales, as being English,

being very, very white, very, very middle class,

very uninterested in a lot of things

that are very important to people in South Wales.

That we exclude people, we are, sort of, palms out kind of people.

One of the roles of the National Trust

is to share what we have as widely as possible,

which is why somewhere like Tredegar House is so important

to the Trust in Wales because it reaches out to a demographic

that normally is not available to us.

Tredegar House feels different to most National Trust stately homes.

Because it was once a school,

and then opened up for community use by the council,

people here feel a sense of ownership,

and the National Trust are capitalising on this

in their use of local volunteers,

working and caring for their house.

It's always a delicate relationship with volunteers.

One of the things that's interesting is that if I work with volunteers,

I often find that volunteers, for one reason or another,

either say they're going to do it then don't do it,

or then they suddenly go on holiday or whatever.

I mean, you have that also? That experience?

Yeah, the vast... The National Trust is a voluntary organisation.

We're run by volunteers, our council, our trustees, they're all volunteers.

Our chairman's a volunteer.

So, in essence, we're people who are dedicating time to do this,

and we do put structure around that, and that's our secret.

So, you have the whole Trust, over 60,000 people,

who volunteer their services but within a structure.

And that's that structure that makes us less like herding cats, although

it is like herding cats sometimes, but less than other organisations.

There are a lot of unresolved issues here at Tredegar.

Can they get the historical mix right?

Can they keep the locals on side?

Can they make the casual passer-by turn off the M4

and become one of the 75,000 extra visitors they require?

Quite frankly, it is a gamble.

It's a huge gamble and it's quite scary, actually.

But, for all our sake, it has to work

and it will only work if we can engage the local community.

It's that simple.

And that's my goal, is to become increasingly relevant

to more people in South Wales.

There's a lot more to do. Isn't it a bit overwhelming?

It's a big jigsaw and we're slowly piecing it all together.

It's very exciting. It's great.

You're brilliantly enthusiastic about it.

It doesn't ever seem... You don't think, sometimes,

"My God, what a burden we've got here?

"What a terrible amount of work we've got to do in this place."

It doesn't feel like a burden.

There is a lot of work, but it's exciting and it's energising.

The Trust fails. The Trust particularly fails in Wales

if anybody feels that they can't go to a Trust property

because it's not for them.

That somehow they're excluded from the process.

That's not going to happen, not on my tenure.

There is no doubt that Tredegar House is a unique place

with a unique set of challenges for National Trust Wales,

but the risks are clear.

As I stand here, I can hear the traffic rumbling past

on the motorway, over there.

They want to get some of that traffic,

and a lot of the locals, to come into this place

and they've got another 48 years to see if they can do it.