About
We are Allan and Mary Owen and we are lucky enough to live in this lovely old house with our dogs Dylan and Tim. If you are here in the summer months you will probably also see our tortoise, Parsley Sheldon, walking around the garden!
We are both local people who have returned home to roost – Mary was brought up in Welshpool and Allan’s family live on the Shropshire/Powys border. Allan has worked in the hospitality industry for over 20 years. In a former life he was catering manager/head chef for a prestigious events catering company, and then head of banqueting and head chef at an AA 2 Rosette restaurant in Shropshire. In between those jobs we also ran our own seafood restaurant and holiday cottage in West Cornwall for four years. Mary works part time for a legal practice in Shrewsbury. Allan’s main passion in life is sailing – the rougher the weather and the longer the passage, the happier he is. When Mary is standing on dry land her heart tells her that she is more brave than she actually is, but if she is truly honest she only likes stepping on board if the sun is out and her G&T won’t spill!
We bought Hafren (Welsh for Severn – the local river) in the summer of 2007, and have spent the last few months trying to restore it to some of its former glory. The terrace, of which this house forms part, is Grade II listed and was built in 1820. In an earlier life we believe our house was a gentleman’s town house, owned by one of the flannel merchants who traded in the town. The house was damaged some 20 years ago when it was vandalised whilst standing empty, but some of the original oak floors have survived and the dining room and sitting room still have the beautifully simple Georgian architrave around the doors. As you come through the front door you will notice that there is a turret at the rear of the hall. Originally the staircase ran the height of the turret from the cellar to the second floor. The original kitchen is now the sitting room and the original sitting room was what is now the Grug bedroom. When the house was extended about 100 years ago, the staircase had to be moved to the position it is in now. The house is built on the site of a Dark Ages chapel which was mentioned in a Will made in 1545. In 1587 a new chapel (Capel Llewelyn) was built on the junction of Mill Lane and Salop Road. This burned down in 1659 but the ruins were still standing in the 18th Century and we have been told that the rear of our house is built from stone reclaimed 1from the chapel. An area of graveyard was established by salvage excavation by CPAT (Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust) in 1986, which revealed 17 burials at the southern limit of the graveyard, some badly disturbed by allotment trenches. 17 skeletons were found very shallow in garden soil. Radiocarbon Dating dated the skeletons to the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries.
We hope you will consider visiting us and that you have enjoyed reading this potted history! We look forward to meeting you.
