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Penllergare Observatory

The Trust has been awarded funding from the Architectural Heritage Fund to develop a project in partnership with Dark Sky Wales to help restore the historic Penllergare Equatorial Observatory and look at the possibility of introducing a planetarium to the building. Over the next few months we will be posting updates about the project on social media; to find out more and get involved, follow our Penllergare Observatory group on Facebook. If you’re interested in the other restoration work that has taken place in Penllergare, you can read more about this here.

About the Observatory

History

The Penllergare Observatory is a Grade II* listed building and scheduled monument that was built by John Dillwyn Llewelyn as a gift for his daughter Thereza on her 16th birthday. In around 1855, this very observatory was used by the father-daughter duo to take one of the earliest photographs of the moon; John worked the camera and Thereza moved the telescope for a longer exposure time. CADW records show that this rare example of a mid-nineteenth century private observatory was built in 1851. It has two rooms, the observatory and a laboratory; the laboratory had a stone gable on the back that is no longer visible today.

The observatory was used as target practice during the Second World War by the American troops that were stationed at the Penllergare House. Luckily, the observatory didn’t suffer the same fate as the house which was completely demolished. There have been multiple different periods of restoration to the observatory and laboratory. In 1981, the Lliw Valley Borough Council renovated the observatory. Then it was renovated by the Penllergare Trust in 2013.
Structure

The hollow bricks used to build the laboratory were from the Great Exhibition of 1851. At the Great Exhibition, Prince Albert commissioned architect Henry Roberts to make a model dwelling for the labouring classes to combat the growing sanitation issues. This dwelling was built with hollow bricks which would guard against damp/moisture within the structure. The model dwelling and the observatory at Penllergare share some similarities in design.

The observatory tower is made up of tolled squared stone with a metal-clad cylinder above. Within the centre of the observatory is a circular stone-built telescope chamber where the telescope would have been mounted during the observatories period of use.

The observatory also had a garden alongside it. The garden contained a collection of rare flowers laid out in a way that allowed for easy observation of their growth and blooming.

Penllergare Observatory

History

Structure