Plans to restore Plas Gunter Mansion in Abergavenny and turn it into a visitor experience are one step closer after the Trust running the project gets the go-ahead it needs to apply for funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Applications to the fund were suspended last year due to the pandemic but Plas Gunter Mansion Trust has just heard that an Expression of Interest they submitted in April this year has been successful. This allows them to apply for around £1.6m from the Heritage Fund, with the Trust planning to fundraise £400,000 for the estimated £2m project.

“Plas Gunter Mansion is of local, national and international significance for its role in the political and religious struggles of the late 17th Century. The building is simply too important to allow it to deteriorate any further,” says Owen Davies, Trust Chair.

The Grade II listed mansion, which dates from around 1600 is historically important because its owners were practising Catholics when this was illegal. They built a chapel in the attic where Catholics worshipped in secret.

The vision is to turn it into an educational, historical and community resource, celebrating its local roots whilst attracting national and international visitors. This will also help to regenerate the area of town at the lower end of Cross Street.

Plans for the building include opening the building to the public so that they can visit the secret chapel, a parlour with an ornate 17th century ceiling and an exhibition space on the ground floor. Here, visitors will learn about the history of the building where several generations of the Gunter family lived from the 17th to the 19th centuries.

“If we secure the funds necessary, we will be able to restore the surviving recusant chapel and magnificent 17th century plaster ceiling whilst sensitively adapting for sustainable, income generating and new exhibition space,” adds Davies.

Although later additions to the building’s fabric will be removed and lost features reinstated the building will be adapted for sustainable income-generating activities like two commercial units and a new social housing flat.

The Trust has benefitted from a team of loyal, hardworking volunteers and is keen to build on this, says chair, Owen Davies:“We’re fortunate to have dozens of regular volunteers, and hundreds of supporters, but we are keen to hear from people who could help us to prepare our Heritage Fund application, strengthen the ties between the future use of the building and the wider community or help us in other ways.”

The pop-up exhibition space which closed at the start of the pandemic is open again on Tuesdays and Saturdays from 10.30 am to 4.00 pm. No more than two visitors can enter the exhibition at one time and they have to abide by the usual covid regulations.

The exhibition charts the fascinating history of the building in photographs and information boards. Monmouthshire society in the late 1600s was riven by conflict between Catholic and Protestant supporters. Catholic worship was forbidden under Charles II because of paranoia about a plot involving the French and Spanish to murder the King and replace him with a Catholic monarch.

The owner of Llanfihangel Court, John Arnold, denounced the two Catholic priests who held secret mass at the Gunter mansion, leading to their arrest and execution at Usk in 1679. One of them, Fr David Lewis, was made a saint and was Wales’ last Catholic martyr.

The running of the current, temporary exhibition relies on volunteers and in the shorter-term, the Trust would like to hear from anyone interested in helping out at the pop-out space on the ground floor of the mansion at 39 Cross Street in the town.

They’re also looking for support in the form of social media marketing.

If you’d like to support the project or get in touch please get in touch via email [email protected] or via the website: plasguntermansion.org.uk