"The attractive town of Aberaeron owes its existence to the Thomas-Jones-Gwynnes who apparently descended from the medieval lords of Towyn (near Cardigan), which eventually came to the Jones family of Tyglyn, Llanddewi Aberarth.

Dr. Alban Thomas was Assistant Secretary of the Royal Society but was sacked in the Jacobite scare of 1722-3.

After returning to Wales he married his relative, Margaret Jones of Tyglyn, thus unwittingly launching the events that led to the creation of Aberaeron.

Their younger son Alban became a rector in Hampshire having married a wealthy parson's daughter, who died immediately after giving birth to an only son.

An increasingly affectionate correspondence with his cousin Susanna Maria Jones of Tyglyn led to Alban coming to Cardiganshire in 1797 to marry her.

She was the heiress of Tyglyn and Towyn and feeling beleaguered by threats to her inheritance.

After the marriage, Alban took the name Thomas-Jones and built the little chapel of St.Alban at Tyglyn. In 1805 his first cousin Lewis Gwynne died a bachelor leaving almost all the Monachty estate to Alban and his wife.

There was also a huge pile of gold which had to be carried on a horse sledge to Tyglyn. No one knows what happened to much of this gold. Some must have been spent on building the harbour at Aberaeron but the small mansion of Tyglyn remained almost entirely as Alban and Susanna had known it from their childhood.

Now Lord of the Manor of Aberaeron, Alban had to take the name and arms of Gwynne so the couple became the Reverend and Mrs.Thomas-Jones-Gwynne of Tyglyn while his son Alban junior moved into Monachty mansion.

In 1807 the Reverend Alban obtained his private Act of Parliament to rebuild the harbour of Aberaeron, and the town with its trades, crafts, fisheries and shipbuilding followed. He died in 1819 and Susanna so ruled the roost at Tyglyn that she was known in the family as "the Empress" though she loved having her step-grandchildren about her.

After her death in 1830 the younger Alban, Colonel Gwynne, came fully into the estate and the building of Aberaeron took off, principally in the renowned Alban Square. He also provided a Town Hall in 1835 and a Church of England chapel (later rebuilt as Holy Trinity Church). The architect for the chapel, and clearly for the planned part of the town, was Edward Haycock of Shrewsbury who may also have designed the new wing Gwynne added to Monachty.

Colonel Gwynne had married Mary Anne Vevers of Yarkhill Court, Herefordshire, who bore him ten children. After the famous head of Lampeter Grammar School moved to Edinburgh Academy, the Gwynnes took their younger sons to be educated there and we find Mary Anne procuring stone for Aberaeron from a Scottish quarry.

Tragically, she died in 1837 of typhus and eventually the colonel married an Edinburgh lady who added six more children to his family. At the age of 57 Colonel Gwynne sailed to Australia to settle some younger sons there. Not long after he returned to Monachty, his eldest son, Captain Alban Gwynne, married so the colonel retired, first to London, then to Clifton where he died in 1861, still Lord of the Manor of Aberaeron, which continued to flourish.

Every heir of the family was named Alban until the last died in 2003.

Commander Alban Gwynne, involved in highly secret work on depth charges during the First World War, needed to live in the south of England. In 1936 for financial reasons he had to sell the Aberaeron estate. Sadly, there are now no male descendants of the family."

Article by Henry Phythian Adams.