Shelley in Cwm Elan

As mentioned our holiday moved on next to Rhaeadr near the Elan Valley, where we saw the above statue in memory of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Shelley was born in Sussex in August 1792. The son of lawyer and MP Timothy Shelley, who in 1815 became a baronet, the poet would have inherited the title and estate had he lived longer. Despite a traditional ‘establishment’ background, young Shelley saw himself as a revolutionary, an idealist who was quite unrealistic and impractical. He was called "mad Shelley" by schoolmates.

He went to Oxford University in October 1810, when he was engaged to Harriet Grove, relative of his uncle Thomas Grove, owner of Cwm Elan, a large mansion later lost when the Elan Valley was flooded to create reservoirs. Their engagement was brief, however, largely because of Shelley’s writings against religious belief, which also resulted in expulsion from Oxford after only six months.

The future poet then went to London, where he met another Harriet, Harriet Westbrook, daughter of an inn-keeper. In July 1811, when Shelley was almost 19, he was invited by his uncle to stay at Cwm Elan. He chose to walk to mid-Wales all the way from the family estate in Sussex.

Whilst in Wales he was greatly impressed by the wild and romantic surroundings

"Rocks piled on each other to tremendous heights, rivers formed into cataracts by their projections, and valleys clothed with woods, present an appearance of enchantment."

"This country is highly romantic; here are rocks of uncommon height and picturesque waterfalls. I am more astonished at the grandeur of the scenery than I expected."

"...I am not wholly uninfluenced by its magic on my lonely walks."

Some brief reflections on Shelley at Cwm Elan were recorded in 1878 by an old woman who had delivered the post to Grove’s mansion

"He was a very strange gentleman. On weekdays he wore a little cap and had his neck bare, but on Sundays, donning a tall hat, he would go with the family to church". He was said to be "full of fun" and "he loved to sail in the rapid mountain streams a wooden boat about a foot in length, and would run along the bank, using a pole to direct his craft, and keep it from shipwreck on the rocks".

This lady also remembered that Shelley once put a rather reluctant cat on board his little boat!

Shelley received a letter from Harriet Westbrook while at Cwm Elan, in August 1811, that prompted him to rush back to London to see her. The young couple, aged just 19 and 16, promptly eloped and married in Edinburgh. They went to Dublin for a while, where Shelley distributed revolutionary pamphlets, then returned in April 1812. His fondness for Cwm Elan led the couple to a search for a house in Wales, as Harriet wrote in a letter on their return from Ireland:

"Strange as it may appear, we have been all through North Wales to find a house, but not one presented itself..."

Despite their wide-ranging search, it is curious that they should set their heart on the manor house of Nantgwyllt, only about a mile and a half from Grove’s house. The newly married couple moved into the large house, but their hopes of acquiring the property would fail. Harriet wrote fondly of Nantgwyllt in April, 1812 "The beauty of this place is not to be described. It is quite an old family house, with a farm of 200 acres meadow-land."

Just a day or two later, Shelley wrote in a letter:

"The house is not yet our own, although we reside here, but will be so in the course of a month. ...This house is large, it will contain seven bedrooms. ...We are now embosomed in the solitude of mountains, woods and rivers - silent, solitary, and old: far from any town; six miles from Rhayader, which is the nearest. A ghost haunts this house, which has frequently been seen by the servants."

On the April 25 1812, he wrote:

"We are not yet completely certain of being able to obtain the house where now we are. The cheapness, beauty, and retirement, make this place in every view desirable. .... mountains and rocks seeming to form a barrier round this quiet valley, which the tumult of the world may never overleap."

In a letter requesting help in securing the property, he wrote that "so eligible an opportunity for settling in a cheap, retired, romantic spot will scarcely occur again".

By the beginning of June 1812 their hopes of acquiring Nantgwyllt had collapsed. Shelley wrote on June 6 "Nantgwyllt is not ours, nor will it be". The following day, his wife wrote "you may imagine our sorrow at leaving so desirable a spot, where every beauty seems centred ...."

With the ending of their hopes at Nantgwyllt they went to stay for a few days at Cwm Elan, then left, never to return. It is clear that they were very happy together at the house which they had hoped to make their home but sadly only for a very short time in the spring and early summer of 1812. Shelley was to abandon his young wife after just two years to live with Mary Godwin. Harriet, desperately unhappy and alone, drowned herself in the Serpentine, Hyde Park, in 1816.

Shelley, by the time of his death an acclaimed lyric poet, was drowned sailing offshore in Tuscany on July 8 1822. His body was recovered and he was cremated on the beach. Many have noted the strange connections with water in Shelley’s life.

In 1937 the water level in Caban Coch reservoir fell to 55 feet below its highest point, and the remains of the manor house of Nantgwyllt were exposed. Thousands came to see this rare sight, repeated in 1947 when another record drought caused the level to drop dramatically.

Although many believed that the house was intact when the site was submerged, only the garden walls and a pile of rubble revealed the location of the house of which Shelley had been so fond