PGW(Dy)38(PEM)

Orielton  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Pembrokeshire  

Hundleton  

195499  

199359  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Parkland and substantial lake to the west. Woodland and garden areas, including water features, to the east; walled kitchen garden.  

Possibly mid-seventeenth century gazebo; the gardens were further developed during the nineteenth & twentieth centuries.  

Orielton is located about 3km west of Pembroke. It is registered for the survival of parkland extant in the early nineteenth century but with earlier origins, and for the presence within it of a rare duck decoy lake, a possibly mid-seventeenth-century gazebo or belvedere, and also plantations, woodlands, the remains of a Japanese garden (created in about 1919), and a walled garden. There is group value with Grade II* Listed Orielton mansion (LB 6573), now a field studies centre, and several Grade II Listed ancillary estate buildings as well as numerous Grade II Listed park and garden structures around the registered area. Additionally, a Bronze Age cemetery of several round barrows on the western margins of the park is a Scheduled Monument (Dry Burrows, SAM PE060). The park and gardens mostly occupy gentle south-facing slopes of undulating land. The park forms a rectangular area bounded on the north and north-west by public roads, on the east by the access road to East Orielton Farm, and elsewhere by access tracks and field boundaries. The wall on the south boundary may date from the time of the first mansion in the first half of the seventeenth century. Substantial blocks and belts of woodland line much of the boundary, and the configuration of woodland is much as it was in the later nineteenth century. The remaining parkland is given over to farming. Plantations and the gardens lie east of the mansion; walls, ha-has and drives separate these areas. Orielton, the re-modelled third mansion, lies roughly central to the park. It is approached from the north off a minor road at the now main entrance with Grade II Listed North Lodge (LB 6580). Other drives (now mostly farm tracks) used to link the house with Grade II Listed West Lodge and gate piers (LB 6583); Grade II Listed ‘The Images’ Lodge (LB 6584; named after nearby Dry Burrows); a lodge adjacent to West Orielton Farm; South Lodge; Grade II Listed East Lodge (nprn 22513); and to the north-east at Grade II Listed Rose Lodge (LB 6585). Within the park three ornamental lakes present in the mid nineteenth century, to the east of the house, are now largely silted and invaded by ground vegetation. The southernmost, and largest (the ‘Lily Pond’) is still recognisable. The fishpond, or decoy lake for wintering ducks, present in the early nineteenth century, lies north-west of the mansion. A rare survival, it was once more extensive and had an island. It is retained by a substantial earthen dam to the west at the southern end of which a sluice links to an overflow stream to the Mill Pond (probably post 1840) to the west. The area between the house and the lily pond, once rolling lawn, is now enclosed pasture. About 200m to the south-east of the mansion is the site of the American gardens, present in 1828, within walls up to 4m high, and thought to be the site of the first mansion. Described in the mid nineteenth century as ‘…. a beautiful wood through which extensive walks are cut leading to a singularly beautiful pleasure garden of about four acres, walled around, in American and French gardening, planted with the choicest flowering and other shrubs in great profusion …. and to the south is a raised terrace with rustic summer house', it became overgrown and lost. On the highest point of the park, on its south boundary, and just to the east of the American gardens, is a tall, three-storeyed, roofless Grade II* Listed tower (LB 6585). It may date from the time of the second mansion, in the mid seventeenth century, built originally as a banqueting house and belvedere, or gazebo, possibly on the remains of an existing lookout tower. About 200m east-north-east of the mansion is the walled garden. It is a rectangular hexagon, long axis east by west, its longest sides on the north and south. Its Grade II Listed surrounding walls are of stone lined internally with brick and up to 4m high (LB 6578). In the south wall is an arched pedestrian entrance with, externally, an iron pergola running south-east along the woodland path. In the north-east corner is an arched vehicular entrance, and a smaller pergola. In 1875 the interior was mostly occupied by lines of fruit trees with a perimeter path and a single bisecting cross path, and glasshouses along the north wall. Intensively cultivated until recently, the paths have gone and the glass replaced with plastic. A small rectangular stone building with brick chimneys is set back-to-back with the central glasshouse. A possibly early eighteenth-century sundial on the lawned area near the mansion, is perhaps the one depicted within the walled garden in 1905. Just outside the north-east wall is Orielton Gardens, a Grade II Listed estate house (LB 6579). Setting - Orielton is located in the rolling countryside of south Pembrokeshire. The extensive wooded parkland and gardens provided a setting for the mansion. Although the overall configuration of the parkland landscape is little changed, significant changes have occurred to features within it, in particular the silting up of ornamental ponds and the dereliction of gardens. The mansion and its nearby buildings have undergone some modification in accordance with its current use as an educational resource. Significant views - The belvedere on the park’s south boundary would have given superb panoramic views of the surrounding countryside. The course of the main drive as it approached the house would have given views of the mansion across its lawns, while the boundary of the west drive is reduced in places to a low wall and ditch to afford views across the park from the house. Sources: Cadw 2002: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire, 262-6 (ref: PGW(Dy)38(PEM). Ordnance Survey first & second-edition 25-inch maps: sheets Pembrokeshire XXXIX.16 & XLII.4 (1861 & 1906).