PGW(Gm)65(BRI)

Coytrahen House  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Bridgend  

Ynysawdre  

289518  

185120  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Landscape Park; garden and walled garden  

1772-97; 1843-59  

Coytrahen is registered for the survival of a late eighteenth-century & mid-nineteenth-century landscape park, contemporary with the building of an important country house. Group value is further provided by its important late eighteenth-century walled and terraced gardens, unusual in their large-scale and good preservation. Coytrahen House (NPRN: 18438) is located to the north of Bridgend in the Llynfi valley. The house lies on the east side of the valley, towards the upper north-west boundary of a small landscape park. The site has a long history but the present house is identified with the ownership of John Popkin, between 1772 and 1797, and it is from this time that the park and gardens were developed. The park once had two drives, from north and south, neither with a lodge. The original, south, drive from Tondu, crossing the railway and river and on through deciduous woodland, is now out of use. The north drive enters the park off the Coytrahen to Brynmenyn lane, just east of the railway line, approaching the house from the north-west with a branch (the former service drive) to the Home Farm, before looping around the house. The park was originally laid out as areas of woodland interspersed with open grassland dotted with trees, clumps, and boundary belts, reaching its present layout before 1877. There has been much felling of mature trees but the broad pattern of woodland and boundary trees remains. There are two main areas of open grassland: to the south-west, the house overlooking pasture fields and the river beyond; and to the east where open parkland (to some extent created by more recent boundary removal) is partly fringed by deciduous woodland, rhododendrons and Scots pines, with hanging woodland to the north. The garden lies mainly to the south-west and south-east of the house. It is mostly twentieth century in date but overlies an earlier layout traces of which survive. The garden is now laid out mainly as lawns and shrub beds below the drive which circles the house. The south-west lawn overlooks the park and is bounded by a revetment wall with steps down to the park below. Within the drive loop, on the south-east side of the house, is a small lawn with paved area bounded by a low parapet wall and behind it a bank of rhododendrons and azaleas. The south-east lawn has undergone many changes but once supported a serpentine lily pool, now grass with ornamental plantings. A ha-ha south of the pool site carries water flowing westwards, culverted beneath the drive. Beyond the pool site, to the east, the haha turns north bounding a grass track which continues north to the park boundary. On the north-west side of the house is a shrubbery, enclosed within the north end of the drive loop. House and garden are flanked on the north-east by deciduous woodland. The kitchen garden lies a short distance to the north-west of the house and is laid out as five conjoining stone-walled compartments on ground sloping down north-south; those at the west and south ends are on the natural slope while the other three are terraced. The uppermost compartment, west of the farm courtyard, is now laid out out as an ornamental garden but the others below it are variously used. The two longest are, at least in part, under cultivation. Evidence of their former use as orchards and a Victorian nuttery survive. The westernmost bay is partly wooded and overgrown but footings of cold frames are visible. The easternmost is the former stable yard and contains outbuildings still in use. Setting – the park lies in an attractive wooded setting in the Llynfi valley, north of Bridgend between the villages of Coytrahen and Tondu. The ground slopes down to the west, with a steep drop to the flood plain at the north end of the park and gentler slopes elsewhere. The park is largely intact though some urban encroachment has occurred on the south by the expanding village of Brynmenyn. Significant views - beyond the river is a wooded slope which forms the background to the park and provides views to the south-west from the house. Sources: Cadw Historic Assets database (ref: PGW(Gm)65(BRI)). Ordnance Survey First Edition 25-inch map, sheet: Glamorgan XXXIV.11 (1875).