The site known as Llys Wen was owned for ten generations by the Thomas family. The first mention of gardens at Llys Wen is in a 15th century poem where they are described as ‘Nine green gardens/Orchard trees and crooked vines/Young oaks reaching up to the sky.’ William ap Thomas was knighted for his services to Henry VII, and after marrying an heiress at the end of the sixteenth century, the family moved to North Wales.

In 1594, Anthony Rudd, Dean of Gloucester, was given the bishopric of St David and bought Llys Wen. He built a new house with an adjoining Chapel either near or on the site of the earlier house. It is not known if he or his son Rice Rudd created the gardens with the cloister. Rice was knighted by Charles I in 1628 and would have been familiar with the royal residences at Hampton Court, Nonsuch, Wimbledon, Hatfield and Theobalds.

In 1670 the house was assessed for ‘Hearth Tax’ and with 30 hearths it was one of the biggest in the county. But Sir Rice had overspent on the renovations, so with debts mounting, his grandson, also Sir Rice Rudd, was forced to mortgage the estate.

In 1710 Aberglasney was bought by Robert Dyer, a successful Carmarthen lawyer. Dyer updated the house but died ten years later, before the work had been completed. Dyer is responsible for planting the yew hedge which was later trained into the Yew Tunnel. His eldest son, also called Robert, inherited the property – Robert’s brother, the poet John Dyer, described the ‘gardens trim and terrace walks’ – but after mounting debts, the estate was once more put up for sale.

In 1803, John Philipps bought Aberglasney on behalf of his brother Thomas, a surgeon returning home after working for the East India Company. It was described by their sibling as a ‘sweet place, the situation is delightfull’. Thomas and his married mistress, Mrs Jane Moore, lived in the house but with no children, left Aberglasney to his sister’s only son John Walters who added Philipps to his surname.

An article in the Gardener’s Chronicle describes the garden in 1892. : ‘a remarkable avenue or bower of trained Yews at Aberglasney, a quaint Jacobean manion and garden belonging to Mr Lloyd Philipps…there is a small but remarkable old piece of gardening close to the house and Yew bower. There is a moderately large quadrangle, a large stone-bordered pool of water has been formed, with a fountain, aquatic plants, and gold fish in the centre. On three sides of the quadrangle, there is a kind of covered walk, under a stone roof, supported by stone columns, with a stone balustrade above. Curiously enough, a second broad walk, with garden beds as borders, is carried over the walk below, so that persons from the trim garden above can look down on to the trim garden with its cool water and fountain below’.

Aberglasney passed to Walters Phillips’s only surviving child, a daughter, and after her death to her daughter, Marianne Pryse. [I am unsure how Lloyd Philipps – article above – fits in] After Marianne’s mother’s death, her father remarried Decima Dorothea Rice.

After Marianne’s marriage to Charles Mayhew, the couple moved to Derbyshire and Aberglasney was tenanted. When Mayhew retired, the family moved back to Aberglasney where Colonel Mayhew planted many specimen trees. Temperance rallies were held at the house and tenants who refused to sign the Pledge were evicted. Colonel Mayhew died in 1907 and the following year, Marianne moved to London.

Aberglasney was requisitioned by the Army during World War II and after Marianne died in 1939, a descendent of the Rice family, Eric Evans, moved into the house with his family. Evans died in 1950 at the age of 30, and the house was sold.

The estate was split up, and David Charles a Carmarthen lawyer bought the house and farm. Another sale took place in 1977 fragmenting the estate further.