PGW(Gt)57(MON)

Nelson Garden  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Monmouthshire  

Monmouth  

350754  

212732  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Small, informally laid out Georgian town garden with fine and unusual garden pavilion.  

Late eighteenth century; about 1840  

Registered for its historic interest as a rare survival of an eighteenth-century town garden. Its layout survives more or less intact and it contains an important and unusual early nineteenth-century garden pavilion. The garden has strong associations with Lord Nelson; he was entertained in a previous summerhouse in the garden in 1802. The Nelson Garden is a town garden located in the centre of Monmouth, at the north-west corner of the town park, Chippenham. The main part of the garden is rectangular, aligned along the north side of Chippenham. However, a narrow, east–west section of the garden, to the west of the main area, links it to no.18 Monnow Street, the house with which the garden is associated, though this link is now severed. The house at no.18 Monnow Street dates from the late eighteenth century and the garden was probably created at the same time. It was certainly in place by the time of Nelson's visit in 1802. The space had a history of use as a real tennis court in the seventeenth century and a bowling green in the early eighteenth. At the time of Nelson's visit to Monmouth, on 18 August 1802, no.18 was lived in by Colonel Lindsay, town clerk of Monmouth, who entertained Nelson, Sir William and Emma Hamilton to tea and coffee in the summerhouse ('that charming retreat') in his garden. The present pavilion, or summerhouse, is a small, open-fronted building of brick and wood, set against the east boundary wall, on a platform about 5m long. It dates from about 1840 replacing its predecessor where Nelson, Sir William and Emma Hamilton were entertained in 1802. The seat in which Nelson sat was saved and installed in the centre of the new bench seat. Most of the garden is taken up with a level lawn, laid out informally with a few specimen trees and shrubs. A large cypress tree stood until 2004, when it was felled, near the west side, with ‘1802’ set out in dwarf box at its foot. A gravel path leads around the perimeter of the garden. To the west of the entrance the path, edged with brick and clipped box hedging, slopes up to a wider terrace along the top of the boundary wall, from which there is a fine view of Chippenham. The north boundary wall of the Nelson Garden is a hot wall heated by horizontal flues within the wall. Source: Cadw 2007: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest, additional and revised entries part 1, 42-4 (ref: PGW(Gt)59(MON).