Tredegar House (Welsh: Tŷ Tredegar) is a 17th-century Charles II-era mansion on the southwestern edge of Newport, Wales. For over five hundred years it was home to the Morgan family, later Lords Tredegar; one of the most powerful and influential families in the area. Described as, "the grandest and most exuberant country house in Monmouthshire" and one of the "outstanding houses of the Restoration period in the whole of Britain", the mansion stands in a reduced landscaped garden of forming the non-residential part of Tredegar Park. The property became a Grade I listed building on 3 March 1952 and has been under the care of the National Trust since March 2012. The park surrounding the house is designated Grade II* on the Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales. Origin of the name The name is first attested in the fourteenth century in the form Tredegyr. This may be explained as a compound of Welsh tre(f) 'a farmstead' and the personal name Tegyr (the same name is found in the Denbighshire name Botegyr < bod 'dwellng place, residence' + Tegyr). The name Tegyr itself may be derived from the Brittonic *Teco-rīx ('fair king'). The form Tredeger is found in the sixteenth century as are variants with -a- in the final syllable. Over time, the form Tredegar established itself as the usual spelling, as in the name of the Tredegar Iron Company of 1800. It was this that gave its name to the village and later town of Tredegar. The current Welsh name of the house is 'Tŷ Tredegar', but this is somewhat unauthentic and is obviously a translation of 'Tredegar House'. History The earliest surviving part of the building dates back to the late 15th century. The house was originally built of stone and had sufficient status to host Charles I. Between 1664 and 1672, however, William Morgan decided to rebuild the house on a larger scale from red brick, at that time a rare building material in Wales. The architect of the enlarged house is not known for certain, but Newman follows Howard Colvin's suggestion that the design was by Roger and William Hurlbutt, who had worked in a similar style at Ragley Hall and Warwick Castle. The architectural historian Peter Smith, writing in his work Houses of the Welsh Countryside, called Tredegar, "the most splendid brick house of the seventeenth century in Wales".