Simon Boyle, Lord Lieutenant of Gwent, has kindly agreed to be our patron.
After being approached by Phil Bevan, the Trust's chairman, Simon Boyle paid a visit to Coed Craig Ruperra and later sent the following message:
Many thanks for your attention and time today. It was a pleasure to meet you and your colleagues and see around the very intriguing site and hear all that had been going on under the aegis of the Trust.
I confirm my willingness to become Patron of the Trust. I will study the papers and books that I was given and will look forward to hearing of major events where you feel my attending could be useful to the Trust`s purposes.
With best wishes
Simon Boyle
From its inception in 1996, the Trust was privileged to have the support of the Lord Lieutenant of Mid Glamorgan, Mr Murray McLaggan, as its patron. When he retired in 2002, it appeared that since the boundaries of the areas allotted to the Lords Lieutenant had been changed, it would not be a simple case of exchanging one Mid Glamorgan Lord Lieutenant patron for another.
The Local Government (Wales) Act 1994 had abolished the 8 administrative counties created by the Local Government Act 1972, and Caerphilly County Borough was formed on April 1, 1996 by the merger of the Rhymney Valley district of Mid Glamorgan with the Islwyn borough of Gwent.
However the act created the concept of preserved counties based on their areas, to be used for purposes such as Lieutenancy. The preserved counties were originally almost identical to the former ones but with a few minor changes intended to ensure preserved counties were composed of whole principal areas. However, these changes still left two county boroughs, Conwy and Caerphilly, split between preserved counties.
In order to rectify this, on April 2, 2003 the part of the local government area of Caerphilly which had been in Mid Glamorgan was transferred to Gwent and the preserved county of Gwent expanded to cover the whole of Caerphilly county borough.
The Trust found therefore that it would have to seek its new patron from the preserved county of Gwent rather than Mid Glamorgan, and following the retirement of Sir Richard Hanbury Tenison in 2001, the new Lord Lieutenant was Simon Boyle.