PGW(Po)39(POW)

Trelydan Hall  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Powys  

Welshpool  

323028  

310602  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

House and garden with later additions set in woodland. No ornamental park but park buildings; lodges, kennels.  

c. 1500 on, present garden c. 1900 on.  

Registered for the survival of relict seventeenth and eighteenth-century garden features associated with the mainly Tudor and Jacobean house and estate outbuildings. Further alterations made to the estate during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Trelydan Hall (LB: 7895) near Guilsfield, is an ancient site dating from at least the medieval period when the surrounding land lay within the demesne of Strata Marcella Abbey. Possible Roman origins are indicated by the record of a Roman villa in a charter of 1170. Otherwise, the history of the surrounding land is uncertain. There is no clear evidence that there was ever any ornamental parkland here. The only features in the surrounding landscape corresponding with typical park design are the north and south Trelydan lodges, a kennel block and pool, and a long drive which connects the Hall with Guilsfield to the north. The lodges were built 1910-20 by the Beck family, owners of the hall in the latter part of the nineteenth-century. The surrounding land is farmland divided into fields by Enclosure hedges, probably dating from between 1830-1850, with ridge-and-furrow earthworks. There is no evidence of any landscaping and there are no ornamental water features and few individual trees of note. During the monastic period the surrounding land was well wooded, the abbey having had a bark industry for the leather trade on part of this land. But on a tithe map of 1840 only a single small 'plantation', of which nothing remains, was recorded on the boundary of two fields to the north of the hall. A roughly rectangular garden surrounds the house on all sides on ground sloping from west to east. To the west of the house a group of very old yew trees stand near the garden boundary. On the east of the house a simple tree planted lawn slopes down to a small brook/water channel which marks the eastern boundary of the garden. The main block of the garden to the south is divided by the straight approach drive and it is contained to the east, and part of the south, by a high red brick wall (LB: 7896). The garden enclosed by the wall contains a large lawn surrounded by herbaceous borders. Opposite the east lawn, shrub and conifer island beds dominate a second lawn. To the west of these beds, a dammed linear pool feeds the water garden which runs across the top of the garden, south of the house front. The water garden centres around a sunken canalised stream set with weirs and rocks in both a rustic and dressed style. Stone-flagged paths run on either side of the stream with steps connecting to the garden and entrance court above. To the north of the house there is a large circular lawn with shrubberies on both the north-west and north-east. It is assumed, in accordance with the status of the house, that there would have been a garden, either productive or ornamental, at Trelydan at least from the seventeenth century but no archive evidence of this has been found. Within the garden today there are two sets of features which date from about that time: The garden walls, which are believed to date from the eighteenth-century, and the yew trees on to the west of the house which appear to be at about 300 years old which may have been ornamental planting. The tithe records the southern area simply as 'garden'. It also records the site of the relic orchard as 'orchard' and the land to the west, along the southern drive and to the west of the house as 'wilderness' but gives no more information as to the appearance of these areas. The form of the present garden is believed to date from the time of the Becks who laid out the box hedging and water garden, creating a garden typical of the period 1890-1920. After the war when the Beatty family sold the site the sale catalogue described a rock and rose garden. Significant Views: Towards the house from the northwest. Views from the gardens to the southwest across the rural landscape. Source: Cadw 1999: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Powys, 250-53 (ref: PGW (Po)2(POW)).