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Famous family's country house opens as luxury venue

30th July 2012 Print
Plas Dinam

A descendant of famous Victorian railway and mining entrepreneur David Davies has launched a new business welcoming guests to the family's magnificent country house in Mid Wales.

Home to five generations of the famous Davies family for 128 years, Plas Dinam is enjoying a new lease of life as an exciting luxury venue for weddings, holidays, corporate events and special occasions.

The house is a perfect base for a huge variety of things to do in the area, ranging from shooting, hunting and fishing to mountain biking, sailing, kite surfing, golf and walking.

Overlooking the scenic upper Severn Valley on the edge of the award-winning village of Llandinam, near Llanidloes, the Grade II listed house has 14 bedrooms and six bathrooms on two floors. Visitors to Plas Dinam are welcomed with the legend PAX INTRANTIBUS (peace to all who enter) and SALUS EXENTIBUS (health to all who leave).

The property has 37 rooms, including a grand dining hall that seats up to 40 people, a drawing room with a grand piano, comfortable sitting room, cinema room, library, billiards room, table tennis room, large kitchen, sunroom, drinks room, cloakroom and bootroom.

Surrounded by 12 acres of beautiful gardens, lawns and woodland, Plas Dinam has a tennis court, outside lawn games, including croquet, giant jenga and Connect 4, stabling for up to five horses and kennels for well behaved dogs, which are welcomed.

When the owners, Lord and Lady Davies, downsized to smaller accommodation in the village last year, their daughter Eldrydd Lamp and her family decided to return from near Perth in Australia to breathe new life into the historic property.

After nine months of organising and planning the new business venture from the other side of the world, Eldrydd, her husband Tyson and their children, Bayden, four, Oscar, two and Freya, one, arrived at Plas Dinam in mid-June and were impressed with the work carried out in their absence.

They welcomed their first booking - an upmarket stag weekend with some of the guests arriving in Ferrari sports cars - three days later and the business is gathering momentum as news of the new venue spreads across the UK and overseas.

One guest, who held a 40th birthday celebration at Plas Dinam, commented: "The venue itself is simply gorgeous and the facilities are fantastic. We all had such a lovely time that we are already planning another occasion and opportunity to go back! Roll on my 50th!"

More than 200 enquiries have been received from people interested in hiring the property, which is steeped is history. The family has a number of special offers available for parties, details of which can be found on the Plas Dinam website plasdinamcountryhouse.co.uk.

To help with the marketing of the new business, Eldrydd has become a member of Mid Wales Tourism, an independent organisation representing around 600 tourism and hospitality businesses in Powys, Ceredigion and Meirionnydd.

"Plas Dinam is a beautiful old house that has been in our family for more than a century," explained Eldrydd, a qualified veterinary surgeon. "Over the years, we have always had a lot of house parties here and filled it with friends and families at weekends. It's a great house for that sort of thing and we want people to come and enjoy the property, whilst also respecting it.

"The house is so well designed that with a family of four it does not feel empty and with a party of 30 it does not feel full."

The new venture is supporting several new gardening, cleaning and catering jobs as well as ploughing much-needed money back into the local economy.

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Plas Dinam