PGW(Gd)2(CON)

Plas Madoc  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Conwy  

Llanddoged and Maenan  

279547  

363289  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Landscape park; garden and kitchen garden  

Eighteenth century; nineteenth century  

Registered for its unspoilt parkland, surviving despite the loss of the house, on a well-chosen site with good views. Plas Madoc occupies a site on the undulating, sheltered, east side of the Conwy valley just north of Llanrwst, a site both interesting and intrinsically beautiful, with panoramic views westwards across the Afon Conwy towards Snowdonia. The layout is simple, relying on the natural advantages of the site, and its design may reflect the work of the well-known landscape designer Edward Milner (1819-1884). Milner may have been involved in work at Plas Madoc, because Col. John Higson, who bought Plas Madoc in 1890, was a friend of Henry Pochin of Bodnant, for whom Milner had worked. The curving outlines of the woodland and shooting coverts are typical of his style, but if it is Milner's work he must have been employed by the previous owner. Milner worked at Bodnant in the 1870s and at Llanfairfechan in the 1860s. Notwithstanding the demolition, in 1952, of the house (NPRN 27748), the landscape now is one of rolling parkland dotted with trees, both deciduous and coniferous, and clumps of woodland with rounded outlines crowning outcrops and hillocks, scenery largely unchanged since the turn of the nineteenth century. Although the park was probably originally laid out much earlier, when Plas Madoc was part of the Gwydir estate, and there are some surviving older trees, there is no information on the layout of the park before the mid-nineteenth century. Sale particulars of 1857 already describe the park as 'richly timbered'. The woods in the park were mostly designed as shooting coverts, and although their shapes have altered slightly and they have grown over the years, the layout of woodland today is basically the same as it was in the 1850s. Trees are mixed deciduous and coniferous. The smaller coverts and copses are mostly located on rocky outcrops or the tops of rises. The park was approached from the south-east off the Llanddoged road (no lodge but two sets of gateposts) reaching the house on the east. But the line was extended after the 1850s, skirting the house on the north in a wide loop to join the Llanrwst-Conwy road to the south-west where a lodge was built, eventually becoming the main entrance. The drive effectively divides the park into three areas, Back Park (east of the drive), Front Park (within the loop) and Far Park (north of the drive). The fencing either side of the drive is still in place, as are many of the trees planted alongside it, though there was never an avenue. The southern, original, part of the drive was never fenced. The garden at Plas Madoc lies almost in the centre of the park, surrounding the house site (NPRN 27748) which is almost central to the garden. The basic layout of the area around the house appears on an estate map of the 1850s, and may pre-date this. The detailed layout dates from the nineteenth century when there was also some expansion, and there are twentieth-century additions. Aside from the walled kitchen garden, the area seems always to have been mainly woodland and shrubberies. The garden site was levelled by cutting into the hillside to construct a terrace which was extended far enough to give a garden terrace on the west side of the house. The main entrance was on the north but the west front had the benefit of the views; there was a verandah all along this side. On its south-west corner the terrace was built to incorporate a pre-existing mature oak tree. West of the house site lay the kitchen garden, surrounded by woodland, in an area falling away to the west and crossed by terracing walls to support level paths. East of the house site the land rises steeply, an area known as the Rookery, again wooded but without formal paths aside from access steps from the drive. To the north is an ornamental pond dammed by a wall and with three terraces below it, and between pond and Rookery an open landscaped area includes a tennis court. In the garden area south-west of the house a carpet of daffodils survives in woodland. The old forecourt, on the north, is flanked on the east by a rockery and other small rockeries lie amongst the shrubberies around the house site. The kitchen garden was laid out between the late 1850s and 1889 followed by later changes of uncertain date. The garden is rectangular, has been partly levelled, and is enclosed by a low stone wall. The wall averages about 1m high, too low for wall fruit, or to give much protection which instead is afforded by surrounding trees. A pattern of cross paths featured on the 1889 OS plan. The glasshouse against the back wall is ruined though the wall still stands (1990s), brick-lined and whitewashed. The stone-built sheds behind it, outside the garden, are also ruined. The north wall is very different from the other walls, being higher, mortared, and with slate slab coping and an imposing gate pillar at the eastern end. It may have survived from an earlier period, being utilised when the kitchen garden was created. In the shrubbery area north of the garden there was at least one glasshouse and a frame in 1889, and the bases of buildings incorporating both brick and stone can still be seen here. Dense linear growth of giant laurel in this area may have originated as hedges. Setting: Plas Madoc occupies a site on the east side of the Conwy valley just north of Llanrwst, with lovely views westwards over the Afon Conwy towards Snowdonia. The valley side at this point is not smoothly sloping, but undulates, offering a site which is both interesting and intrinsically beautiful, and this certainly must have been one reason for the choice of site. Significant Views: Westwards over the Afon Conwy towards Snowdonia. Sources Cadw 1995: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Clwyd, 128-131 (ref: PGW(Gd)2(CON). Ordnance Survey second-edition map: sheet Caernarvonshire XIV.13 (1899).