Penrhyn Castle

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Penrhyn Castle (Welsh: Castell Penrhyn) is a country house in Llandygai, Bangor, Gwynedd, North Wales, constructed in the style of a Norman castle. The Penrhyn Estate was founded by Ednyfed Fychan. In the 15th century his descendant Gwilym ap Griffith built a fortified manor house on the site. In the 18th century, the Penrhyn Estate came into the possession of the 1st Baron Penrhyn (of the first creation; 1737-1808), in part from his father, a Liverpool merchant, and in part from his wife, Ann Susannah Warburton, the daughter of an army officer. Lord Penrhyn, who was elevated to the peerage in 1783, derived great wealth from his ownership of slave plantations in the West Indies and was a strong opponent of attempts to abolish the slave trade. Lord Penrhyn's wealth was used in part for the development of the slate mining industry on his Caernarfonshire estates, and also for the development of Penrhyn Castle. In the 1780s, Lord Penrhyn commissioned Samuel Wyatt to undertake a reconstruction of the medieval house. On Lord Penrhyn's death in 1808, the Penrhyn Estate was inherited by his second cousin, George Hay Dawkins, who adopted the surname Dawkins-Pennant. From 1822 to 1837, Dawkins-Pennant engaged the architect Thomas Hopper, who rebuilt the house in the form of a Neo-Norman castle. Dawkins-Pennant, who sat as Member of Parliament (MP) for Newark and New Romney, followed his cousin as a long-standing opponent of emancipation, serving on the West India Committee, a group of parliamentarians opposed to the abolition of slavery, on which Lord Penrhyn had served as chairman. Dawkins-Pennant received significant compensation when, in 1833, emancipation of slaves in the British Empire was eventually achieved, through the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act. In 1840, the Penrhyn Estate passed to Edward Gordon Douglas, through his marriage to Dawkins-Pennant's...