page_title: Lymore, Montgomery
section_title: Later history and demolition in 1931
hierarchical_section_title: Lymore, Montgomery / History / Later history and demolition in 1931
caption_attribution_description: English: One of the massive oak trees in Lymore Park. As it shows about 350 tree rings, it is likely that these trees were planted at the same time as Lymore was completed in 1677.
context_page_description: Lymore, or Lymore House or Lodge was demolished in 1931. It stood in Lymore Park, one mile ESE of Montgomery. The house was a large half-timbered house built by Edward Herbert, 3rd Baron Herbert of Chirbury, c. 1675, to replace the family residences in Montgomery Castle and Black Hall in Montgomery. The House, which had been uninhabited but maintained for many years, was used for an event in 1921, when one of the floors collapsed with disastrous consequences, resulting in demolition in 1931. The Earls of Powis still own and maintain the park. The park includes the grounds of the Montgomery Cricket Club, which is the oldest cricket pitch in Montgomeryshire. Offa's Dyke forms the eastern boundary of the park.
context_section_description: Lymore was only lived in for one year by Edward Herbert, 3rd Baron Herbert of Chirbury, and he was succeeded by Henry, the 4th Baron, who died in 1691. His widow Lady Catherine continued to live at Lymore until her death in 1714, when the house and estate devolved to Francis Herbert of Dolguog at Penegoes in Montgomeryshire.
  In 1903 Fletcher Moss in his Pilgrimages to Old Homes, mostly on the Welsh Borders gives a graphic account of being shown round the deserted house by the daughter of the caretaker.  He recounts cycling up to the hall amid a herd of grand Herefords, some of which looked like weighing a ton, and by a picturesque saw-mill  where great trunks of trees are piled up. He remarks that the oak in this house is wonderful. All the floors in the house are waxed and polished, but the panelling, doors and other oaken work is simply dusted. He noted that the house was well kept, some of the old furniture was still there, and that fires were lit during the winter to keep the house warm. Lady Powis had had a picnic tea there the previous day and Lord Kitchener was shortly to come for a shoot. In 1907 the house was recorded in Country Life and in 1909, the future King George V came to Lymore as the guest of the Earls of Powis for a shooting party.
  The end of Lymore was heralded in August 1921, when the floor of the Banqueting Hall dramatically collapsed in the course of a church bazaar. This was graphically described at great length in the Montgomeryshire Express and Radnor Times of Tuesday 9 August 1921. It was reported that there was a considerable congestion of people near the main entrance … suddenly without any audible promontory symptoms, a knot of guest were observed to disappear outright.  17 people had disappeared, nearly 12 feet below, into  a stone vault. The Earl of Powis was at the time talking to the Rector of Montgomery, and he disappeared with the lady journalist from the Montgomeryshire County Times, while the Rector remained above. Fortunately, no-one was badly injured although some people were badly shaken.
   
  In 1929 the Earl of Powis decided that he could no longer afford the cost of maintenance and offered the house through the Office of Works to the Nation. The Earl also offered the house to anyone for a £1 to anyone who would put it in order.  The house was then surveyed by  the architect A B Waters  and his report in the Montgomeryshire Collections provides detailed plans and elevations of the house, as it stood.  The furnishings and fittings of the House were then offered for sale at an auction on the 25 October 1929 by the Estate department of Harrods. A last minute offer of £10,000 was made by the National Trust through the Office of Works to preserve the house for the Nation, but the Office of Works did not consider that this was a sufficient sum for the repair work, so the sale went ahead. This was followed on the 20th May 1931 by a sale of the structural elements of the house.  A fine carved staircase with diamond-rusticated newels had already been removed to Aldborough Hall, Ripon, Yorkshire. Much of the other timber was purchased by Kenneth Hutchinson-Smith, an  architect/builder from Wolverhampton, where it was used for building mock, Tudor houses.
caption: Sawn trunk of Oak Tree that had been blown down.  The tree rings indicate it was planted in the late 17th century.
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