Margam Castle is a large mansion

Mansion

A mansion is a very large dwelling house. U.S. real estate brokers define a mansion as a dwelling of over . A traditional European mansion was defined as a house which contained a ballroom and tens of bedrooms...

 house built in Margam

Margam

Margam is a suburb of Port Talbot in the Welsh county borough of Neath Port Talbot, Wales, close to junction 39 of the M4 motorway.- History :...

, Port Talbot

Port Talbot

Port Talbot is a town in Neath Port Talbot, Wales. It had a population of 35,633 in 2001.-History:Port Talbot grew out of the original small port and market town of Aberafan , which belonged to the medieval Lords of Afan. The area of the parish of Margam lying on the west bank of the lower Afan...

, Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

, for the Talbot family. It was built on a site which had been occupied for some 4000 years and from the 11th century was an abbey. The "castle" is actually a comfortable Victorian era

Victorian era

The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...

 country house, one of many "mock" or "revival" castle

Castle

A castle is a type of fortified structure built in Europe and the Middle East during the Middle Ages by European nobility. Scholars debate the scope of the word castle, but usually consider it to be the private fortified residence of a lord or noble...

s built in the 19th century during the Gothic Revival. It was commissioned by Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot

Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot

Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot FRS was a landowner, industrialist and Liberal politician. He developed his estate at Margam near Swansea as an extensive ironworks, served by railways and a port, which was re-named Port Talbot.-Early life:Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot was born at Penrice, Swansea,...

 (1803–1890) and was constructed over a ten-year period from 1830 to 1840.

After a Grand Tour

Grand Tour

The Grand Tour was the traditional trip of Europe undertaken by mainly upper-class European young men of means. The custom flourished from about 1660 until the advent of large-scale rail transit in the 1840s, and was associated with a standard itinerary. It served as an educational rite of passage...

 of Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

, Talbot returned to south Wales and from 1830 set about redeveloping the family estate at Margam.