PGW(C)45(FLT)

Rhual  

II*  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Flintshire  

Gwernaffield with Pantmwyn  

322083  

364992  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Small landscape park; formal layout of forecourt and garden; informal grounds.  

c. 1660s; c. 1739; nineteenth century  

Registered as a rare survival of an unaltered seventeenth-century formal forecourt layout, with walls and alcoves decorated with contemporary ornamental iron plates and tulips, together with the survival of a seventeenth-century bowling green. The formal layout and informal grounds are set within a small landscape park. Rhual has historical associations with the landscape designer Stephen Switzer (1682-1745) who may have been responsible for some early eighteenth-century landscaping. The registered area shares important group value with the grade I listed house (LB: 14883), grade II listed stable block (LB: 16140), cruck barn (LB: 16139), cowshed (LB: 16141) and the Alleluia Monument (LB: 14998) together with the other listed garden structures at Rhual. Rhual mansion lies on high ground above the south bank of the River Alun, about 1km north-west of Mold. It dates from 1634, but with eighteenth and nineteenth-century alterations. The house is surrounded by parkland though little now remains of it. Its history before the eighteenth century is unknown but it was probably never extensively landscaped. The general configuration of woodland and open ground remains as it was in the late nineteenth-century. The park lies on gently rolling ground above the river Alun, rising to the west end, where the house, outbuildings and gardens are located, but on the north falling steeply into the Alun valley. The house is approached from the south via an entrance and short drive through the brick boundary wall off the Mold-Gwernaffield road. Landscaping features consist of a clump of mature limes and some isolated trees, mainly oak, scattered across the fields to the east of the house. A ha-ha separates the park from the forecourt garden. Within the park is Grade II Listed Rhual Grange, reputedly the former Dower House, with possible pre-nineteenth century origins (LB 16142). There is also a Grade II Listed baptismal tank dating from c.1685 (LB 16114). The general configuration of woodland and open ground remains as it was in the late nineteenth century. Trails through The Grove, the former ‘Grove Walk’, have now gone, though a monument dated 1788 inside the wood survives and may date the Walk. West of the house is an area of mixed woodland and dense undergrowth on top of a plateau. It incorporates a former (seventeenth-century) bowling green and skittle alley. A rhododendron-filled linear trench may once have been a canal. Also in the wood is a loop footpath lined with Wellingtonias, and a Grade II Listed ice house (LB 16138). Just outside the park, to the south, is the Alleluia Monument (LB:14998) erected in 1736 by Nehemiah Griffith to commemorate a battle thought to have taken place in the vicinity in about AD 420. The forecourt, gardens and grounds of Rhual lie to the east, south and west of the house. The forecourt is aligned with the main east front of the house. It is seventeenth-century in date, and has undergone virtually no alteration since it was made. It is thought to have been built by Evan Edwards, the builder of the house. The forecourt is approached along a gravel drive, flanked by lawns set with ornamental trees and shrubs, from the south-east via an entrance through the brick boundary wall on the Mold-Gwernaffield road. At some stage in the eighteenth or early nineteenth-century the east wall of the forecourt was lowered and turned into a kind of ha-ha to give views over the park, and a ha-ha proper was made between the drive and the park. The forecourt is bounded by brick walls (LB: 16135) and is laid out on two levels, at the upper level with two grass rectangles surrounded by wide gravel paths, and below, where the enclosed area widens, laid out as lawn with early nineteenth-century stone sundial (LB: 16136) at centre and circular gravel walk. Two corner pavilions are situated in the angle of the lower forecourt and bee bole alcoves set into one wall. Adjacent on the south is a garden area of lawn. In the corner where the forecourt widens is a stone urn on a rectangular base with coats of arms, dated 1735 (LB: 16137). To its west, is a lower level laid out as a parterre of box-edged rose beds – the parterre is probably of late nineteenth-century date. At the east end is a large, ancient yew hedge, with a narrow opening into a small sub-rectangular enclosure bounded by similar hedges but on the east side by a high brick wall. The kitchen garden lies to the north-west of the house, on ground sloping down towards the north. It is an irregular pentagonal shape, long axis north-east by south-west, widest on the south, and is enclosed by walls of brick on a stone base standing to their full height, about 2.2 m on the outside. The original garden layout has now gone. The east side was flanked by a range of buildings. The garden is now laid out mainly to grass, with a tennis court and swimming pool. There is known to have been a kitchen garden at Rhual, probably on this site, in 1739, when details of fruit to be grown in the kitchen garden are recorded in estate correspondence. The presence of an orchard within the garden is indicated on early OS maps. During the Second World War the garden was highly productive. Setting - Rhual lies in a rural area in the Alun valley to the immediate north-west of Mold where urban expansion is now approaching the west boundary of the park. Significant views - From the gardens there are views east and south-east down the Alun valley towards Mold and beyond. Sources: Cadw 1995: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Clwyd, 220-3 (ref: PGW(C)45). Ordnance Survey, six-inch map: Flintshire XIII (first edition 1871); 25-inch map: Flintshire XIII.7 (1909). Additional notes: D.K.Leighton