by Carolyn Jacob
It is probable that John Josiah Guest had Dowlais House built around 1818, possibly as a home for his bride Maria Rankin. It was a large, solid, well-proportioned structure. Her early death left him a widower until his marriage to Charlotte, daughter of the Earl of Lindsey, in 1833. Better known as Lady Charlotte Guest, she described her first visit to Dowlais House in her diary.
‘ By the time we had reached the House it was quite dark and the prevailing gloom gave full effect to the light of the blazing furnaces, which was quite unlike all I had ever before seen or even imagined. The interior of the house was precisely what Merthyr’s sketch of it had taught me to expect. My first impulse was to establish myself in the library, by far the pleasantest room in the house. We walked out as far as the limits of the garden, round the house and stood without the gate – the furnace gate-upon the steps leading to the Works’.
It is here that she succeeded in translating the Welsh tales the Mabinogion into English and within the short space of thirteen years she also gave birth to ten children in Dowlais House. No doubt it was partly on their account that she encouraged her husband in 1846 to buy Canford Manor in Dorset. Cholera in Dowlais made it essential for the young family to move from Dowlais House. However, on his death bed, John Josiah Guest insisted on returning to Dowlais House in 1852, so that he could die where he was born – in his beloved Dowlais.
Dowlais House then became the Dowlais residence of G. T. Clark, Esq. who took over as the manager of the Works. Dowlais House was converted to offices in 1894 after G.T. Clark retired from the business residence. The alterations which followed destroyed most of its older features as a private house, with the exception an attractive balustrade running up a stairs. Its proximity meant that the House featured in many photographs of the Dowlais Works. Prior to its demolition in the early 1970s, it was used as the employment exchange.
