APPENDIX 7
As we have seen, Coity Castle fell to the portion of Anne, the illegitimate daughter of Jocelyn Sidney, 7th Earl of Sidney. He died in 1728, and the castle was subsequently bought by the Edwin family of Llanfihangel. By this time, the castle itself was already in ruins; it was the lands that went along with it that were valuable. Llanfihangel means ‘Church of St Michael’ and is the name of a parish near Cowbridge in the Vale of Glamorgan. The patriarch of the family was Humphrey Edwin, a wealthy hatmaker who was Sheriff of Glamorgan in 1689 and Lord Mayor of London in 1697. He was a dissenter, which is to say a Puritan; an interest in Protestant esotericism seems to have been something of a family tradition.
Humphrey Edwin died in 1707 and was succeeded to the family properties by his eldest son, Samuel (d.1722), who had three children. The eldest of these, Catherine Edwin, remained unmarried, but joined a Christian sect called the Moravian Church of Bedford. This was an offshoot of the Unity Brtheren, a German Protestant organization that many believe was closely connected with German Rosicrucianism.
Samuel’s son Charles added to the estate by buying the manor of Coity and other lands. He was also highly politically active, being MP for Glamorgan in 1738 and for Westminster in 1742–7. His wife, Lady Charlotte Edwin, was the daughter of the Duke of Hamilton and was a prominent early member of the Methodist Church, which gained enormous popularity during this period.
Charles Edwin was succeeded by his other sister, Ann, who married Thomas Wyndham, heir to the Dunraven Estate. In 1642, the Wyndhams acquired lands at Dunraven. This is on the coast of the Vale of Glamorgan, close by where the waters of the Ogmore River and its tributary, the Ewenny river, enter the Severn Estuary. He died in 1751, and she followed him 1758. Their son, Charles Wyndham, who was MP for Glamorgan from 1780–9, inherited the family estates.
He was followed by his son, Thomas Wyndham. In 1802, he built a magnificent house called Dunraven Castle. Used as a hospital in the Second World War, it was demolished in 1960. All that remains now are the walled gardens and one or two other, outdoor fragments of walls and stairways. In 1810, his daughter Caroline married Henry Quin, the son of an Irish aristocrat. Her father-in-law, when raised to the peerage of England, took the title of Earl of Dunraven, presumably in anticipation of his son’s inheritance. Thus it was that, on his death, Lady Caroline became the 2nd Countess of Dunraven.
She was an important benefactor to the Coity area and in Bridgend, close to the law courts, there is still the remnants of a water fountain that she had installed for the public good of the town. On it there is an inscription: ‘Erected by Caroline, Countess of Dunraven, in memory of her friend John Randall esq, who for thirty-three years managed her estates. AD 1860.’ Those estates would have included Coity Castle.
The last Earl of Dunraven (the 7th) died in 2011. As he had no male progeny, his titles went extinct with him. The former Dunraven estates, however, had already been broken up. Today, Coity Castle, like many other important sites in Wales, is administered by Cadw, the Welsh Heritage trust. The ruined church of Llanbedr-fynydd (St Peter’s-on-the-hill) remains the property of Alan Wilson and Baram Blackett, although they have issued many shares certificates to spread the ownership to their supporters in the quest for the real King Arthur project.