PGW(C)38(FLT)

Talacre  

II*  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Flintshire  

Llanasa  

310555  

383084  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Small landscape park; informal pleasure grounds.  

Eighteenth century; c. 1820s-30s.  

Talacre is located on a hillside overlooking the Irish Sea. It is registered for the historical interest of its extensive early nineteenth-century pleasure grounds and plantation, including an unusual and quite well-preserved Grade II* Listed rockwork grotto (LB 563) and folly tower (LB 562); and its fine eighteenth-century Palladian banqueting house (LB 560) set in the kitchen garden wall, possibly designed by eminent landscape designer Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. There is also group value with Grade II* Listed Talacre Abbey (LB 558) and its octagonal riding school (LB 559) together with Grade II Listed kennels (LB 565) and St Benedict’s Lodge with entrance gate piers (LBs 25100 & 25129) on the main drive from Gronant. Talacre is also notable for being the former seat of the Roman Catholic arm of the Mostyn family, one of the most important landowners in north-east Wales. Talacre became a nunnery in the 1920s. The present park is on rising ground behind the house, which flattens out into a large field of about 150 acres, the Dingle valley passing through its west flank. Its date is uncertain. A ‘Park Issa’ is listed in a survey of 1634 but whether that refers to the present park is unclear. There is little planting, the main feature being the Hovel Plantation on the highest point, probably of late eighteenth or early nineteenth-century date, formerly with a building at centre but now gone. Of the several original drives only the west drive from Gronant is still in use. A winding track, the outer part is now built around. Former drives from the north, east and south have become disused as outlying parts of the estate, along with their entrances and lodges, became detached. Except for the eighteenth-century work of the banqueting hall, said to have be designed by Brown, the gardens at Talacre are nineteenth-century in character and planting. They lie around the house, sloping downhill to the north and rising more steeply to the south. From early mapping the garden appears always to have been heavily wooded - planted with shrubs, interspersed with pockets of open ground; the northern extent is now cut off by the A494. At the west end of the house a small brick and stone rockwork area has been recessed with small pockets left for filling with plants. In front of this is a formal stone fountain in an octagonal pond. To the north-west and north-east below the house are lawns. To the south is the Riding School from which there are walks west to a chain of three ponds; the lowest is the largest and to its west is a ruinous ice-house. At the top of The Dingle is another pond with walks down the valley. On higher ground behind the house terraces have been made to support various features. The first, now a cemetery, is oval and was initially laid out as formal flower beds set in gravel. The next terrace contains the folly tower and grotto, both thought to be contemporary with the house (c.1824). The tower is now ruinous. A path around it leads to the grotto entrance. It has several chambers connected by winding passageways. One of the chambers is open to the sky. A footpath east leads to the edge of the old quarry where the remains of a stone summerhouse lie buried beneath layers of ivy (nprn 23065). To the west of the house, on ground above the ponds, are the walled gardens, a rectangular arrangement of two conjoining enclosures on the same north-south alignment. Both are disused. The walls are of brick, c.3m high. Entry is from the north through a row of stone potting sheds, fruit and vegetable stores. A row of glasshouses lies directly on the other side of the wall. The north garden is the larger with a central well aligned on the banqueting house set into the north-west wall; it became the gardener’s house in the nineteenth century. The smaller garden, on the south-west, was a fruit garden and many fruit trees survive. Adjacent to its west is another orchard. A pit house and the remains of frames are situated outside the walled gardens at the north end. Other glasshouses were also sited outside the southern end, though no traces survive. Setting - Talacre lies in a rural setting between the villages of Gronant and Gwespyr above the coastal lowland of north-east Wales. The fringes of the former estate have become detached in places leading to the modification of lodges and the truncation of drives. Significant views - The location of Hovel Plantation affords views across the park and wooded pleasure grounds to the Irish Sea beyond and is intervisble with the walled gardens. From the rear of the house are fine views west across the pleasure grounds. Sources: Cadw 1995: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Clwyd, (ref: PGW(C)38). Infoterra (Google Maps) imagery (accessed 06.09.2021).