Milford Hall Collection

(M/MIL)

The Milford Hall collection is an extensive record of family papers of the Lewis family.  The Lewis family owned a large tannery in Newtown and moved to Milford Hall from Glan Hafren in 1936.  Hugh Lewis and his wife Eveline were members of the Montgomeryshire county set, and they numbered famous literary figures amongst their acquaintance.

In the collection are several letters from J M Barrie, creator of Peter Pan.  There are also letters from Michael and Nico Llewelyn Davies, to the Lewis family, two of the five sons of Arthur and Sylvia Llewelyn Davies who provided the inspiration for Barrie’s lost boys in “Peter Pan”.

Barrie befriended all five Llewelyn Davies boys and adopted them on the death of their parents. He even used the name of one of them, Peter, for his most famous character.

The letter above was written on 6 October 1913 and is fairly indecipherable, but seems to refer to a shooting party which Barrie took part in with the Lewis family, at Glan Hafren.  It ends with Barrie expressing relief at having ‘retired into private life again’.

Another of the Lewis’ literacy associations was one of the major poets of the Great War, Siegfried Sassoon.This letter below by Sassoon, about his work on George Meredith, the English novelist and poet forms part of the Milford Hall Collection.Sassoon referring in his letter to “…”old Lady Lewis”, whom I met a few times at musical parties in the ‘20s, and found most delightful- as everybody did”