Middleton Hall

Llanarthney, Carmarthenshire

Built in 1789, for Sir William Paxton (1744-1824), M.P., a Scotsman who'd returned from India having made a fortune with the East India Company. He purchased the estate from the Middleton family and replaced the dilapidated old 17th century manor with this mansion, designed by the brother of Paxton's business partner in India, Samuel Pepys Cockerell. Among Cockerell's pupils was Benjamin Latrobe who emigrated to America where he became famous and took inspiration from Middleton Hall to build the Van Ness House in Washington D.C. that gained national notoriety during the Civil War when it featured in a plot to kidnap Abraham Lincoln....

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This house is best associated with...

Sir William Paxton

Sir William Paxton, M.P., of Middleton Hall, Carmarthenshire

1744-1824

Ann Dawney

Lady Ann (Dawney) Paxton

1765-1846

Edward Hamlin Adams

Edward H. Adams M.P., of Middleton Hall, High Sheriff of Carmarthenshire

1777-1842

Amelia (Macpherson) Adams

Mrs Amelia Sophia (Macpherson) Adams

1776-1831

After Paxtons death in 1824, his widow (who was twenty years his junior) sold the estate to Edward Hamlin Adams who had made his fortune in his native Jamaica sourcing slaves for the colony's sugar plantations. He was elected as M.P. and High Sheriff for Carmarthenshire and lived here with his wife, Amelia Sophia Macpherson, the daughter of the swashbuckling Captain John Macpherson, of Mount Pleasant, Philadelphia.

The Adams' son, Edward, Welsh-ified their name by changing it to "Abadam". Middleton passed through the female line of their family until 1919 when it was sold to Lt.-Colonel William Nathaniel Jones. Still in his ownership but having been left unoccupied for several years, a fire ripped through it in 1931 and the ruins were demolished in 1951. Its foundations are still visible as the site is home to the National Botanic Gardens of Wales.