PGW(Gt)52(MON)

Talycoed Court  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Monmouthshire  

Llantilio Crossenny  

342079  

215163  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Small late Victorian landscape park; terraced garden.  

1882 - c. 1893.  

Talycoed Court is registered for the historic interest of its late Victorian terrace garden and small landscape park. It was built for the historian Joseph Alfred Bradney (1859-1933) author of ‘A History of Monmouthshire.’ The registered park and garden has group value with the mansion (LB: 2787), former stables and clock house (LB: 2788), forecourt walls and railings (LB: 2789), entrance lodge (LB: 2790) and entrance gates, piers and walls (LB: 24324). Talycoed Court is a large Victorian mansion dated 1882 designed by the architect F.R. Kempson in Queen Anne style. It is situated on ground sloping to the east just to the north of the Trothy valley. It stands in the centre of its park, and is approached from the south by a drive which enters the small forecourt to the west of the house. An avenue of oaks flanks the east-west part of the drive, and continues across the park, to the horizon on the ridge east of Talycoed Farm. Trees have been lost but originally the avenue was continuous (six-inch Ordnance Survey 1902). A late nineteenth-century Queen Anne style lodge, also by F.R Kempson, stands to the west of the entrance gates. Opposite the entrance is a rubble stone wall with an ornamental drinking trough set into it (LB: 24325). Talycoed Park is a small landscape park of pasture and isolated deciduous and coniferous trees set on gently rising and undulating ground to the north of the river Trothy. The park was landscaped at the same time as the house was built, in the 1880s and 1890s, by Sir Joseph Bradney. A small stream runs down the east side of the park, with a wooded slope to its east. To the north-east of the house a small lake was formed, with a dam at its southern end, and a walk to it from the north end of the garden. The lake is now silted up, but it is still surrounded by rhododendrons and laurels, and the straight path to it from the garden remains, although now turf covered. The area between the lake and the garden has a high stepped brick wall along its west and north sides, and may have originally been an orchard. In the north wall is a door into the woodland, which probably originally led to a woodland walk. To the west of the house is a small rectangular gravelled forecourt, entered on the west side, and with a short drive off to the clockhouse and stables to the north. It is surrounded by a low brick wall topped with iron railings. The terraced garden lies to the south, east and north-east of the house. The terraces are built out over the slope and revetted with stone walls and connected by a flight of stone steps. At the north end of the lower terrace is a small stone pavilion, open to the sky, with two pointed arches on its south side. To its west is a doorway in the wall leading to steps down to the walk to the lake. The original layout of paths within the gardens has gone from all but the upper terrace of the north end of the garden, where a wide gravel path still runs along the terrace. The rest of the garden is laid out to lawns and wall borders, with hedges dividing the separate properties (the house is now divided into four separate units). The kitchen garden is situated to the north of the stable court. It is a small, roughly rectangular walled garden, with red brick walls topped with terracotta tiles on all but the west side. There are doorways in its north and south walls. Along its west side is a stone wall of uneven height with a doorway bearing the date '1893' over it. On the outside of the north wall are lean-to brick bothies. To the north is a rectangular area bounded on the east by the walk to the lake, and on the west and north sides by a high brick wall topped by terracotta tiles, stepped down the slope on its west side. It is now a pasture field, but was probably originally an orchard. There is a door in the wall near the south end of the west side, and another in the north side leading to the wood. Significant Views: Views to the east and to the south from the garden terraces across the garden, park and surrounding countryside. Sources: Cadw 1994: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales: Gwent, 143-144 (ref: PGW (Gt)52). Ordnance Survey, 25-inch sheet Monmouthshire VII (1901) Ordnance Survey, six-inch sheet Monmouthshire VII.SE (1902)