PGW(Dy)65(PEM)

Trewarren  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Pembrokeshire  

St. Ishmael's  

182926  

206787  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Small , simple park; extensive pleasure grounds; walled kitchen garden.  

1845; 1850s.  

Registered for the survival of an ornamental layout of the mid nineteenth century incorporating a small park, extensive pleasure grounds and a walled kitchen garden. The estate includes an interesting folly building in a dramatic position on the cliff top and a massive wall across the head of Monk Haven. Trewarren is a substantial Regency period mansion (LB: 20343) situated about half a kilometre to the west of the village of St Ishmael’s, on the south coast of Pembrokeshire. The ground is gently rolling, sloping generally to the south, towards the sea, with a valley running southwards from Trewarren down to Monk Haven. The house and garden overlook a small park to the south. This is very simple, consisting of a large, roughly rectangular field, bounded for the most part by a rubble stone wall. On its west side the ground slopes down towards the Monk Haven valley. The boundary with the garden is a substantial, rubble stone revetment wall, which extends from the lane on the east boundary of the garden all along the garden’s south side and beyond, bounding the area of farm enclosures to the west. This is shown in a photograph of the house of about 1870, with cattle grazing in the ‘park’ below. The south boundary wall, which is broken down in places, runs down to the north-east corner of the kitchen garden at its south-west end. The 1874 Ordnance Survey map shows the present layout of the ‘park’, with a small deciduous clump of trees, now gone, in the north-west corner. The area is demarcated as parkland on the 1908 Ordnance Survey map. It was presumably laid out at the same time as, or soon after, the house was built in 1845. The Sale Particulars of 1940 refer to 40 acres of park and woodland. There are two quite distinct areas of garden at Trewarren. First, there is the garden next to the house and secondly the much more extensive area of pleasure grounds which occupies the valley between Trewarren and Monk Haven. The garden area next to the house is relatively small and is in two separate areas, to the east and west of the house. It was laid out in its present form soon after the house was built in 1845. The larger area to the east is laid out informally and is bounded by a rubble stone wall. The drive entrance, flanked by stone gate piers, lies at the northern apex. The drive curves gently southwards to a gravel forecourt on the east front. To the south of the forecourt and house is a narrow lawn, beyond which is the park. The garden west of the house is a walled rectangular area, wall 1.7m high, with the north wall corresponding to the north end of the house and the south being an extension of the revetment wall bounding the park. Around the edge of the garden are earthen terraces, best preserved on the north, with a steep scarp down to the sunken centre. This garden is referred to in the 1940 Sale Particulars as the walled flower garden, with a lawn bordered by rhododendrons. A photograph in the Particulars shows a large Monkey Puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana) to the west of the house but this has now gone. The Monk Haven valley was ornamented as wooded pleasure grounds, and was also used for the kitchen garden. The valley runs north-south and is almost a kilometre long. Paths, walls, ruinous built structures, silted ponds and some trees remain to show that the valley was ornamentally laid out with woodland walks leading to water features, garden areas and folly buildings. A tree-lined path runs south through woodland past the kitchen garden from where it turns south-west. The valley sides are wooded, planted with a mixture of deciduous trees which become more sparse, stunted and windblown at the seaward end. The track continues down the west side of the valley to an open grass area in front of a massive stone wall (LB: 20347) at the foot of the valley; the stream is culverted through it to the beach beyond. A path along the east side of the valley, from the sea wall, branches back up the valley side to a small folly, the Malakov Tower (LB: 20345) spectacularly located on the cliff edge in the south-east corner of the pleasure grounds. The kitchen garden is an eight-sided enclosure bounded by high, mortared, rubble stone walls, which stand to their full height. It lies on the valley floor below the southern corner of the park, just to the west of the former vicarage. It is also probably part of the original, 1840s-50s layout of the gardens and grounds. Against the outside of the short east wall is the ruined gardener’s cottage or bothy. The 1874 map shows the garden was once divided into a western section and a smaller eastern one, the dividing wall now gone. It also shows perimeter paths and cross paths in the northern part, meeting at a circular feature. The path from the door in the north wall to this feature can still be traced, as can the feature itself, which is now a boggy pool with stone edging. No glasshouses are shown but rendering against one wall suggests that there might have been a later one, now gone. Significant Views: Views south from the house and garden across the park. Panoramic views along the Pembrokeshire coast from the folly tower. Sources: Cadw 2002: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire, 318-21 (ref: PGW(Dy)65(PEM)). Ordnance Survey first-edition six-inch map, sheet Pembrokeshire XXXII (1874).