PGW(Dy)39(PEM)

111 Main Street, Pembroke  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Pembrokeshire  

Pembroke  

198803  

201264  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Walled and terraced formal garden.  

About 1760.  

Registered as a rare survival of a late eighteenth-century formal town garden of some grandeur, attached to one of the most important Georgian houses in Pembroke. Its structure and main features, including terraces, fine brick piers flanking the central axis and an octagonal brick gazebo, remain. The registered garden has group value with the associated substantial town house (LB: 6395), garden gazebo (LB: 6342) and front garden wall, railings, gatepiers & gate (LB: 6396). 111 Main Street is a substantial Georgian house, of about 1760, situated on the south side of Main Street. Its garden lies to the south of the house on partly-terraced ground sloping southwards down to the valley bottom, now occupied by Upper Common Park. The garden is bounded by brick and stone walls, its lower wall, at the south end, being built on the remains of the medieval town wall. Fine brick piers define the central axis of the main part of the garden. They are a dominant and original feature. Between them are three dressed stone steps, about two metres wide. The square piers are flanked by brick walls about 2.1 m high and stand about 2.2 m high, topped with overhanging moulded sandstone cornices, the upper parts of which are stepped. Below the piers and upper terrace the garden widens out on both sides. The next terrace is a sloping lawn with borders along its side walls and lower side. On the south side the lawn is bounded by a terrace wall about 2.5 m high, built of rubble stone with brick facing. It has a low stone parapet, with a gap on the central north-south axis of the garden. The south boundary of the garden consists of a high rubble stone wall standing on the lower part of the medieval town wall. A ramp runs up the lower part of the wall, from east to west, leading to five stone steps up to a door into the garden near the west end of the wall. At the foot of the east end of the wall is the lower part of a circular medieval tower with two layers of arrow-slits and a door on the east side. On top of this stands an octagonal two-storey gazebo. The garden and its gazebo are almost undoubtedly contemporary with the building of the house in about 1760. Although the garden has a modern overlay of planting and some built elements, such as piers and trelliswork, its structure and main features are original. The formal layout of the garden, with its strong central axis, is not unusual for town gardens of the period. The 1885 25 in. Ordnance Survey map shows three terraces below the small one closest to the house, which then had a rectangular pool in its eastern half. By 1908 (2nd edition Ordnance Survey map) this had been replaced by a glasshouse. A central path ran down the garden, with steps at each drop in level and also near the foot of the garden. There was a rectangular pool in the western half of the bottom terrace and a flight of steps against the south boundary wall led up to the east side of the gazebo. Significant View: Along the central axis of the garden. Source: Cadw 2002: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire, 268-70 (ref: PGW(Dy)39(PEM)).