Plas Yn Rhiw

Plas Yn Rhiw is one of the most enchanting and least-visited of National Trust properties in Wales — a small, ancient manor house perched high on the Llŷn Peninsula overlooking the dramatic sweep of Cardigan Bay and the wild bay known as Hell's Mouth (Porth Neigwl). Its story is inseparable from the three remarkable sisters who rescued it from dereliction and gave it, along with a significant stretch of the surrounding coastline, to the National Trust in the 1940s and 50s.

The house itself is largely 16th-century in origin, with 17th and 18th-century additions that have mellowed into the hillside over four centuries. It is small by manor house standards — intimate, even domestic — with low ceilings, thick stone walls and small windows that speak of a vernacular Welsh tradition rather than the classical ambitions of grander houses. This modesty is central to its charm: Plas Yn Rhiw feels lived-in rather than preserved, a genuine home rather than a show house.

Honora, Lorna and Eileen Keating were the daughters of a Nottingham architect who had bought Plas Yn Rhiw as a holiday home in the 1930s. When the property was put up for sale in 1938, the sisters — all artists and conservationists with a passionate love of the Llŷn — bought it themselves to prevent it falling into unsuitable hands. They found the house semi-derelict, its garden overgrown, its fabric deteriorating. The restoration they undertook over the following decade was not a grand heritage project but a personal act of love, carried out with modest resources and immense commitment.

The terraced garden they created — working with the natural contours of the hillside, using box hedges to create structure and filling the beds with flowering shrubs, snowdrops, bluebells and roses — is one of the loveliest small gardens in Wales. From the garden and the house, the views across Cardigan Bay to the Pembrokeshire coast, with the Lleyn Peninsula sweeping away to Bardsey Island, are simply magnificent.

The Keating sisters gave Plas Yn Rhiw and a substantial area of surrounding farmland and coastal land to the National Trust, an act of conservation generosity that preserved one of the most beautiful corners of the Llŷn for public enjoyment.