A journey through Christmases past

Holly Morgan is transported back in time through five centuries of festive history at Tredegar House

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> Father Christmas wandering throughout Tredegar House, Newport

I GREW up in Newport, but walking into Tredegar House this week for its 500 Years of Christmas event felt like stepping not just into the city's past, but my own.

With more than 100 decorated trees, thousands of lights and rooms transformed to reflect centuries of festive traditions, the house becomes a journey through time - one which feels strangely personal when you've known the place all your life.

Each space has been styled to represent a different era of Christmas at Tredegar House, from Tudor banquets and Victorian parlours to 1950s schooldays and 1980s nostalgia.

Moving between them, I found echoes of my childhood, reminding me of when I visited for the first time about 15 years ago as part of a primary school trip.

To be honest, returning to the National Trust property actually made me quite upset that I had not visited again sooner. It is an incredible piece of history, right on our doorstep.

As you travel through the rooms, there is so much information about its history, and lots of volunteers who will tell you everything you might want to know about the house and the Morgan family, who called Tredegar House their home for centuries.

Tredegar House isn’t just any old building. The mansion we see today was built in red brick between 1664 and 1672, during the Restoration era - making it one of the finest surviving 17th-century country houses in Britain.

Its roots go back even further: a medieval manor once stood on the site, and some traces of that earlier age remain.