BY CHARLES EVANS

Henry William Paget, Earl of Uxbridge, who commanded the Allied Cavalry and lost a leg at Waterloo, was, in recognition, created Marquess of Anglesea and remembered by his family as Uncle One-Leg.

About 1810 he had engaged James Wyatt to remodel Plas Newydd, which stands on the Southern shore of the island near the end of the Victoria Bridge and looking across the strait to the mountains of Snowdonia.

The house, a charming example of Wyatt’s “Gothick”, contains the Paget heirlooms going back to Tudor times and formerly at Beaudesert in Staffordshire, the family’s original abode, now demolished.  The most distinctive feature, however, is the room decorated in 1937 by the late Rex Whistler, artist and designer of genius, who was killed in Normandy leading his company soon after D-Day.