It was no use and the girl duly died of a broken heart. The young musician had few prospects and Watkins forbade the match, forcing his daughter to marry another man. It was a lonely and imposing building with a mysterious legend attached to it.Īccording to folklore the house eventually passed into the ownership of Isaac Watkins whose daughter supposedly fell in love with a young harpist from Nottage. This large and imposing building was a Tudor-built house, originally part of five farms that supported and serviced nearby Neath Abbey.

One of the places that Blackmore saw during his time at Nottage was nearby Sker House. Between the coastal scenery of Glamorgan and the rolling hills of the English county, the young boy could not have had a happier early childhood - even thought he concept of orphans and the thought of being left without family often haunted him. The family also had connections with Devon, just across the Bristol Channel, and several holiday periods were spent there. He was later to say that his aunt Mary taught him to read, write and spell and made sure that he was familiar with the history, folklore and dialect of this part of Wales. His father was unable to look after him and the baby, along with his elder brother Henry, were sent to Nottage Court where they could be brought up by his mother's sister Mary.īlackmore enjoyed the first six years of his life at Nottage, roaming the sand dunes around Kenfig and developing a love of nature and the countryside that never left him - and which is a major factor in nearly all his books. Unfortunately for the young Richard, his mother Anne died from typhus just three months after he was born. The house had originally been part of a wheat farm for nearby Margam Abbey but after Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in the 16th century the house and its lands passed into private ownership. She came from Nottage, outside Porthcawl, the family living in some style at Nottage Court. Another ancestor, William Wake, was Bishop of Lincoln and, later, Archbishop of Canterbury.īlackmore's mother Anne had strong Welsh connections. It was a distinguished ecclesiastical family, John Blackmore's wife Harriet being descended from the famous Nonconformist hymn writer Philip Doddridge - the reason RD Blackmore carried his name. Richard Doddridge Blackmore was born at Longworth in Berkshire in 1825, the son of the Rev John Blackmore and Anne Barnett Knight.

However, what many people do not know was that this gentle, unassuming lawyer, teacher and author had strong connections with Wales and that he even set one of his romantic novels, The Maid Of Sker, in and around the Porthcawl area.

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