PGW(C)50(FLT)

Nerquis Hall  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Flintshire  

Nercwys  

323995  

360010  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Small landscape park; multi-period garden, with formal and informal elements.  

c. 1700-1734; c. 1790 - early nineteenth century.  

Registered for the partial survival of an early eighteenth-century formal layout, including a canal, and for late eighteenth to early nineteenth-century small landscape park and garden with some unusual buildings. The registered park and garden shares important group value with the house and the many associated estate buildings and structures of contemporary date. Nerquis Hall (LB: 15207) is a substantial three-storey stone house in Elizabethan style, situated on the west flank of the valley of the river Terrig, to the south of Mold. To the east of the house is a fine group of stone outbuildings arranged around a largely cobbled courtyard. Opposite the entrance to Nerquis a short track to the village road is flanked by stone walls and by rows of mature beech and horse chestnut, which probably dates to the early nineteenth-century phase of landscaping. Nerquis has a small park of about 27 acres, on rolling ground to the north and south of the house. The park was probably made in about 1790 by John Gifford, at the same time as he was enlarging the garden. Although simple, with little ornament and planting, a long ha-ha was made on the south boundary of the garden to give views out across the southern part. The northern part of the park consists of a roughly rectangular pasture field to the north of the drives and outbuildings and bounded on the north side by a former colliery tramway. Against the north boundary, on the highest part of the park, is an eye-catcher, a small stone sham building, 'Ty Castell' (LB: 15219); it may once have been partly used as a shelter for deer. The southern part of the park consists of a large pasture field in the angle between the walled garden on the north and the southern end of the former garden canal on the east. It is bounded on the south side by a substantial stone wall, an ancient boundary wall, with large mature beech trees in the south-east corner, against the wall. The garden is situated mainly to the south and west of the house. It can be divided into four main sections: the entrance drives and forecourt; the former canal and terraces; the informal area; and the walled garden. It was made in two main phases, in the early eighteenth century and the late eighteenth to early nineteenth century. The entrance, from a minor road on the west, consists of twin wrought iron gates flanked by cast iron piers, dating to the late eighteenth-century (LB: 15220). They lead to two parallel drives flanked by walls the northern of which is now in use as the main drive. The other, the original drive, is now disused, grassed over, and flanked by rows of horse chestnuts. The present drive leads to the entrance to the forecourt, to the north-west of the house. The forecourt entrance has similar gates to those at the main entrance (LB: 313). The forecourt is of gravel next to the house, with a level lawn to the north, bounded by a row of yew trees along the curving north wall (LB: 15211). South of the house a long wide grass terrace is flanked by yew hedges, with eighteenth-century wrought iron gates (LB: 15223) completing the vista from the house and leading to the former park at the end. The canal, running north-south, now dry, runs parallel to it. Grass walks flank the former canal. To the east of the canal is a sloping area of informal garden, made in the last decade of the eighteenth-century. It is bounded by a stone wall, and is built up above the slope on the east side. A walk runs from the south end of the canal through informally planted trees and shrubs. A grass path leads northwards back up to the canal level. Near the north-east corner of this area is a roughly circular pond with a grass walk around its west side. A sloping lawn to its north-west is bounded by a stone revetment wall on the west, by a grass scarp on the north, and by trees and shrubs to the east. In its north-west corner is a small rendered two-storey brick pavilion, originally a dovecote on the first floor and privies below. At the north end of the lawn footings of a former glasshouse are visible in the grass. Early Ordnance Survey maps show a straight path running from the glasshouse all the way to the gothic orangery (LB: 15221). The walled garden (LB: 15222) also made in the last decade of the eighteenth-century, lies to the west of the house. It is bounded on the south side by a curving ha-ha and on the west and north by a high brick wall topped with stone coping. Flues within the wall indicate that it was at least in part heated. The walled area was formerly a kitchen garden and orchard, but was always integrated into the main garden, originally with a central east-west path, now truncated. A raised walk or terraced garden is built against the wall below which are glasshouses and cold frames. To the west are the ruins of a large lean-to building, probably the ‘stove house’ made in the early nineteenth-century. A new potting shed has been built against the north side of the wall. Set at an angle against the middle of the west wall is the semi-octagonal gothic orangery (LB: 15221). It has a crenellated top, brick sides, is partly rendered and has five tall gothic windows, the front three with cast iron tracery and dressed stone surrounds. It formerly had underfloor hypocaust heating, with a furnace behind. To the south is a small single-storey stone cottage with a gothic window in its gable end. Significant Views: Across the park to the eye-catcher folly. Vista from the south front of the house towards the vista gates. Views out from the gardens across the ha-ha overlooking the park. Source: Cadw 1995: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Clwyd, 176-9 (ref: PGW(C)50).