Welcome
Gathering the Jewels features over 30,000 images of objects, books, letters, aerial photographs and other items from museums, archives and libraries throughout Wales.
Search the map
New to Gathering the Jewels is G.I.S. A geographical search facility that will enable searching by location and place name.
Articles
Home » Articles » Augusta Hall (Lady Llanover) (1802-96)Augusta Hall (Lady Llanover) (1802-96)
A collection of items relating to Augusta Hall (Lady Llanover) (1802-96), patron and promoter of the Welsh language and culture.
A collection of items relating to Augusta Hall (Lady Llanover) (1802-96), patron and promoter of the Welsh language and culture.
Augusta Hall, Lady Llanover or 'Gwenynen Gwent' (The Bee of Gwent), was born on 21 March 1802 in the village of Llanover, Monmouthshire. She was the daughter of Benjamin Waddington and a great-niece of Mary Granville (Mrs Delany). In 1823 she married the industrialist and politician Benjamin Hall of Abercarn and Hensol.
Although she was well-connected with the London social circle, Lady Llanover is best known as an important patron of the Welsh language and culture. Her home in Llanover House was an important meeting-place for Welsh poets, authors and musicians and a great emphasis was placed on the Welsh language and traditional way of life within the Llanover estate: at Aber-carn, local children were taught through the medium of Welsh, and Lady Llanover presented items of 'traditional' Welsh dress to her tenants. Her interest in this field came first to the fore in 1834 when she won an eisteddfod prize for her essay on the preservation of the language, literature and traditional dress of Wales. She was a prominent member of the Welsh literary society 'Cymdeithas Cymreigyddion Y Fenni' (the Abergavenny Cymreigyddion Society), and by the end of her life she had built up an extremely valuable collection of Welsh books and manuscripts, including the manuscripts of Iolo Morganwg. She published a biography of her great-aunt Mrs Delany in 1861-2, and a volume on traditional food, 'Good Cookery ... and Recipes Communicated by the Hermit of the Cell of St. Govan' (1867), which included some of her illustrations of traditional Welsh peasant dress. She died at Llanover House on 17 January 1896 and was buried there six days later.
