Llys Tanwg was built around 1920. Dr Hewlett Johnson (1874–1966), the ‘Red’ Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, bought the house and surrounding fields in 1931, attracted to the property both by its perfect position, and by the fact that his mother had come to the field before the house was built as a special place for being alone with nature.
Hewlett’s children’s grandchildren are now spending holidays at the house - five generations of the family have enjoyed Llys Tanwg.

The Second World War and its threat of air-raids disturbed the peace of the Deanery in Canterbury such that Nowell Johnson, the Dean’s wife, and her young daughter Kezia were evacuated to Llys Tanwg, and it was during this period that Keren was born. From that time it became more and more of a second family home, with long summer holidays spent there after the 14 - 17 hour car journey from Canterbury. An extension was built above the downstairs kitchen, which is now the upstairs dining, kitchen and utility room and passage, and in the 1960s, Stephen Edwards, Nowell’s brother, retired to Harlech, moving into the downstairs flat with Ruth, his wife.

Stephen was a passionate ornithologist, and from the bay window of their sitting room saw many rare species of birds, including the first sighting of a hoopoe in North Wales since 1924. Stephen, like Nowell and Kezia, was also a fine painter (Nowell being a graduate of the Royal College of Art), and many of their paintings are hanging in the house. Stephen and Ruth moved away in the late 1980s, with the house in need of some substantial repairs.

Then began an era of tenants downstairs, one of whom, the local policeman and his family, were nearly driven mad by the cello of Matthew, Keren’s second son, who lived in the upstairs for