Friends or lovers? Either way, the Ladies of Llangollen fascinated Georgian society

The Ladies of Llangollen built a life together in 18th century Wales, becoming famous for their shared home, joint identity and devoted companionship. When Caroline of Brunswick heard about their marriage-like union, her reaction was unexpectedly accepting

Two elderly women stand outdoors beside a small dog, both wearing long black riding habits and tall black top hats. One faces slightly toward her companion while the other looks ahead. The image is a nineteenth-century illustration of Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, known as the Ladies of Llangollen.

Published: June 24, 2026 at 2:47 PM

Save

When we think about queer love in the past, we might assume that it was necessarily secretive and short-term. But the Ladies of Llangollen show that this wasn’t always the case.

Ad

“Love and homemaking are not necessarily words that people associate with same-sex attraction in the 18th century. They don't necessarily have an idea of what intimacy was happening between same-sex attracted people in the 18th century, what expressions of love were occurring, what homes they were making together,” Anthony Delaney, an honorary fellow at the University of Exeter and author of the new book Queer Georgians: A hidden history of lovers, lawbreakers and homemakers, told the HistoryExtra podcast.

And people in the past also reacted to same-sex couples in a more progressive way than we’d perhaps expect – for example, the reaction of Caroline of Brunswick to two unmarried, high-born Irish women who lived together, known as the Ladies of Llangollen.

Caroline of Brunswick was married to King George IV and was briefly, nominally the Queen of the United Kingdom from 1820 to her death in 1821. In the early 19th century, Delaney says, she expressed a surprisingly modern attitude towards the Ladies of Llangollen.

Who were the Ladies of Llangollen?

Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby were upper-class Irish women who grew up near each other in Kilkenny, Ireland. They met in 1768, when Butler was in her late 20s and Ponsonby a young teenager.

They built up a relationship based on shared interests in reading, history, philosophy, and walking, and planned to escape Ireland together to avoid having to get married. Against the wishes and best efforts of their families, they did so in 1778, when Butler was 39 and Ponsonby was 23.

They settled in north Wales, at first in a village called Llangollen, where they were known by locals as ‘the ladies.’ As upper-class women, they had no means of earning an income, so had to rely on small amounts of money from friends and reluctant relatives.

“Their stipends were much lower than they would have been if they'd married men,” Delaney says. “They never got to return to their hometown of Kilkenny, because they were told that they could go, but they must never come back.”

Word spread that two ladies were living together, and their reputation grew, leading to lots of notable people coming to visit them, including Lord Byron, the Duke of Wellington, and Charles Darwin. Eventually, King George III granted them a pension.

Some historians have argued that Butler and Ponsonby were not romantically or sexually involved. They cite the fact that the pair looked into suing a magazine that implied they were in a sexual relationship in 1791, and that there was no evidence of one in their letters and diaries.

But on the other hand, they had both of their initials engraved on their glassware, signed letters jointly, were buried together, and called their dogs ‘Sappho.’ Noted diarist Anne Lister, best known for being the “first modern lesbian”, also wrote to her partner that it was unlikely that the Ladies’ relationship was platonic.

A surprising reaction

According to Delaney, Caroline of Brunswick also heard about the Ladies of Llangollen.

A painted portrait of Caroline of Brunswick standing outdoors in a landscaped setting. She wears a flowing white Empire-style dress and a bonnet decorated with red flowers, one hand raised to the brim of her hat while the other holds a dark object at her side. The cloudy sky and soft brushwork give the portrait a romantic, late-Georgian atmosphere.

Caroline of Brunswick, wife of the future George IV, painted in 1798. Few royal marriages have been as publicly disastrous as that between Caroline and George. The pair separated shortly after the birth of their only child, Princess Charlotte, and spent years waging a bitter war of accusations through the press and Parliament. When George became king in 1820, he unsuccessfully attempted to strip Caroline of her title through the notorious Pains and Penalties Bill. Public sympathy largely favoured the queen, turning her into a symbol of resistance to royal privilege and helping to fuel a growing culture of popular political engagement in Regency Britain. (Photo by Getty Images)

“She says, ‘I could never marry a female friend because they're too overbearing – if you think men are controlling, try being a woman married to another woman,” Delaney says. “She also says, ‘I can't imagine this for myself, but each to their own taste.’”

This is an unusual opinion for such a high-born aristocrat to have.

“Princess Caroline, somebody who's in the elite part of society, making no bones about the fact that a marriage-like union has been formed between two women in the early 19th century, is radical,” Delaney says.

We can’t say for sure why Caroline was so open-minded about this, but perhaps her own unusual love life helped her to sympathise with others living outside of the normative structures of marriage.

Her marriage to King George IV had very quickly broken down after their wedding, and they had lived separately since the birth of their only child, Princess Charlotte. But this wasn’t a respectful distance – the pair showed obvious disdain for each other and had very public conflicts over Caroline’s income and behaviour.

Many felt that King George mistreated her, since he excluded her from royal business; restricted and then took away her access to her daughter; and conducted a humiliating investigation into whether a child she adopted was actually her biological son. Later, he pursued very public smear campaigns designed to expose her for adultery after she left England and allegedly found love with an Italian man.

Maybe we can understand if she, like the Ladies of Llangollen, wasn’t keen on the idea of marriage to a man.

Caroline’s acceptance of the Ladies of Llangollen reveals Georgian attitudes to gender and sexuality

Although the Ladies of Llangollen weren’t legally married, Caroline used the language of marriage when describing them, Delaney says.

This is “an acknowledgement of their companionship and of their union,” he says, which suggests that some Georgians may have understood the Ladies’ relationship “in spousal or marital terms” even in the absence of a legal piece of paper.

Two elderly women stand outdoors beside a small dog, both wearing long black riding habits and tall black top hats. One faces slightly toward her companion while the other looks ahead. The image is a nineteenth-century illustration of Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, known as the Ladies of Llangollen.

Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, the “Ladies of Llangollen”, depicted in their distinctive black riding habits and top hats, c.1825. Rejecting the conventional expectation that women of their class should marry, the pair fled Ireland in 1778 and established a shared household in north Wales, where they lived together for more than half a century. Their celebrated partnership attracted visitors ranging from writers and artists to politicians, and has since become one of the most famous examples of a same-sex domestic relationship in British history, offering a rare glimpse into alternative forms of companionship and identity in the Georgian era. (Photo by Getty Images)

“Marriage and the language of marriage was definitely being used in the 18th century to acknowledge the companionship that was happening between same-sex attracted or gender non-conforming people,” he says.

While these relationships were relatively unusual, and there was obviously homophobia present in society and the law, the Georgians had an understanding of gender and sexuality that wasn’t totally anti-queerness.

When it came to same-sex relationships, “Georgians were not necessarily talking about sex, they were talking about gender identity,” Delaney says. “So often you'll find in Georgian archival material that sex and gender identity are very closely conflated.”

There was the concept of a third sex in Georgian times, Delaney says, which usually referred to “somebody that is gender non-conforming, or who is not applying themselves to the norms” of gender and sexuality that most people conformed to.

“The Georgians were incredibly curious about these types of things. They were asking a lot of the same questions that we are asking today about gender particularly,” he says. “They were certainly intrigued by [people who weren’t] fitting in. Then the Victorians came along and tried to control it – and I think we're still sadly trying to control it today to a certain extent.”

Ad

Anthony Delaney was speaking to Isabel King on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.

Authors

Serafina KennyFreelance journalist

Serafina Kenny is a freelance journalist specialising in the history of health, relationships, and social culture

Ad

Ad

Loading...

Ad

Loading...