‘In 1778, two Irish gentlewomen put on men’s clothing and ran away together. Lady Eleanor Butler had received several offers of marriage but was determined to share her life with her friend Sarah Ponsonby. […] They spent the rest of their lives in a black and white house called Plas Newydd outside Llangollen, cultivating their garden, improving their minds and filling the house with clocks, cabinets and “whirligigs of every shape and hue”. [They also had] a little dog called Sapho.’
