FOLLOWING on from last week’s spotlight on the Ormerod sisters, here is an early-20th century photograph of their home, Sedbury Park.

A grand house was built on this site by Major-General Sir Henry Augustus Montagu Cosby, a popular officer in the East India Company’s army who had made a fortune in India.

He bought what was then Barnes Farm in 1797, which he called Barnesville Park, and created a mansion for his retirement.

After he died in 1822 the estate was bought by George Ormerod who added more land and employed the architect Robert Smirke, more famous for designing the British Museum, to remodel the house – which he also renamed Sedbury Park.

Smirke added the colonnade with portico and a single storey building connected to the main house for Ormerod’s great library.

The house was altered again in the late 19th century by Sir William Henry Marling who added the balustrades and forecourt enclosure.

In the ’20s it became a hotel and in 1942 an approved school, and latterly a residential care home.

Text by the curator of Monmouthshire Museums.