Notes from the day I “discovered” Panta House at Glascoed

From a conversation with a neighbour at Poplar Tree Cottage, on October 3rd 1993

The house was estimated to be approx 200-300 years old (probably therefore built in the 1700s). It was situated down a footpath, that starts at Poplar Cottage, next to a small wood (Pantau Bushes).

The last inhabitants, the Mainwaring family, were known to have lived at Panta for some time. They stopped living at Panta “approx 30 or 40 years ago” - in the late 1950s?? The Mainwarings were a fox-hunting family and used to keep a fox cub tied up to the fence outside the cottage.

The house was then inherited by a family that lived away. The neighbour believed that it was a Vicar inherited it, from the South-East of England? The new owners let Panta go to “rack and ruin” and eventually asked for it to be pulled down in the late 1970s - I guess to avoid paying rates.

Panta House was described as a “lovely old cottage” and I was told that there was “no good reason why it should have been pulled down”. At the time that I visited, only part of one wall remained - and was overgrown with brambles, trees etc.

Inhabitants included the Pitt family (from 1853? to John’s death in 1865).

Parents: John Pitt and Sarah Pitt (nee Davies)

Children: Sarah Ellen, Henry James, Alice Ann, William John and Thomas Jesse.

LINKED RECORDS:

CENSUS: 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871