500 years of Christmases at Tredegar House
Tredegar house is a very interesting place, it was owned for centuries by the Morgan family and was once the UK’s biggest council house, it’s been a school and most importantly, it’s been the centre of hundreds of Christmas celebrations in its history. We’ve come along today to find out all about what’s going here this Christmas.
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00:00 Well, this year we've pulled out all the stops. It's our biggest festive event that we've
00:05 done here in Tredegar and we're really excited to be sharing it with as many people as we
00:09 can.
00:10 I'm here at Tredegar House, the former home of the Morgan family, including Captain Morgan,
00:14 yes, the actual one from the rum. And this year they're opening the doors to this fascinating
00:19 manor house showcasing centuries worth of history and all the Christmases that have
00:23 taken place within the walls of one of the most iconic buildings anywhere in South Wales.
00:28 Here at Tredegar we've got hundreds of years of layers of history that we pull out every
00:32 day in our stories that we share with visitors. And this year we're focusing on Christmases
00:37 past. So we're looking at how Christmas is celebrated here at Tredegar by the Morgan
00:41 family from the very early years when the Tudor house stood here before the beautiful
00:47 Redbrick mansion that's here now, right on through to the Victorian period and the time
00:51 of Sir Godfrey Morgan, who did so much for Newport and the surrounding area, through
00:55 the 1920s and 30s with Evan Morgan and his wife Olga, and even up to the 1950s when St
01:00 Joseph's School was here. And the sound of the house would have rung with lots of very
01:05 excited chatter by the schoolgirls that were here as well.
01:09 This place is Christmas. There are trees in every room and it's absolutely full of history.
01:13 Tredegar House has been an icon of Newport for centuries. And just walking around this
01:17 beautiful old manor house, you can feel all the 500 years of Christmases that have taken
01:21 place in these halls.
01:23 But initially our kind of ideas of Christmas in the very early Tudor and 16th, 17th century
01:29 periods following that, it's very different from what we might expect now. It was very
01:33 simple. There weren't Christmas trees. A lot of it was about natural greenery. It was still
01:37 a lot about feasting and gift giving was also and always a really important part of it.
01:42 So what we tried to do this year is kind of bring out examples of the different gifts
01:45 and toys that people would have had over the years. And hopefully some may recognise some
01:51 of those from being a little bit similar to what we still have, but some look very, very
01:54 different.
01:55 The house is decorated room to room with all different parts of history, from the Tudors,
01:59 the Victorians, all the way up until the 1950s and beyond. Guests can explore all the way
02:03 through the rooms of Tredegar House, bringing them up to the modern day and learning all
02:07 about this fascinating place along the way.
02:09 Yeah, the house is made for it actually. It's beautiful, absolutely beautiful. But we've
02:12 also got certain special visitors coming. We have Father Christmas himself, who is taking
02:18 time out of his very busy preparations to welcome our guests and say hello to them,
02:23 maybe even hear what they would like for Christmas as well. But we've also got, again, a very
02:28 long standing tradition here at Tredegar House, a very, very grumpy gentleman named Ebenezer
02:33 Scrooge, who delights our visitors, particularly our young ones, by being very, very bad tempered
02:39 and insulting. And it always seems to go down very well. And we'll also have singalongs
02:43 in this beautiful space here for everyone who wants to join in and sing some Christmas
02:47 music to get into that festive spirit.
02:49 It is amazing to be able to see inside the history here and see what kind of Christmases
02:54 the Morgans and everyone else who's lived in this beautiful house had. Imagine spending
02:58 Christmas Day in there, eh? Alright for some. James P. Watkins, Local TV, Tredegar House.
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