18660

 

II  

Designated  

05/08/1997  

05/08/1997  

Betws Lodge  

 

Conwy  

Abergele  

Abergele  

Gwrych  

292561  

376565  

SE  

Gwrych Castle park boundary wall rises steeply to 138m along the road to Rhyd-y-foel. Betws Lodge lies outside the wall line, approximately 100m short of the junction of the road to Rhyd-y-foel centre.  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

 

Gwrych Castle was created by Lloyd Bamford Hesketh in association with Thomas Rickman from 1816. The boundary wall, with its various lodges and gates probably followed the main building's completion in c1822, although works continued until c1850. Betws Lodge forms the dramatic entrance to woodland outside the park, which was probably a hunting and shooting reserve.  

A long front to the road, with a central chamfered 4-centred carriage arch set between twice offsetting buttresses, between which is an outset parapet on stone brackets, simulating machicolations, and is reduced in height at the centre. Outside the buttresses the parapet deepens dramatically, the outsetting brackets set low, and the wall extends to quasi-end towers, where the offsetting parapet returns to its former height. The intermediate section each side has sturdy raking buttresses at the mid point.  

 

Included as an important element in the total setting of the Grade I Gwrych Castle, and of special interest in the history of the picturesque movement.