PGW(Gd)23(GWY)

Cefnamwlch  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Gwynedd  

Tudweiliog  

223511  

335495  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Garden surrounded by plantations, walled garden.  

Probably during the third decade of the nineteenth century.  

Cefnamwlch (NPRN 26236) is located south of the village of Tydweiliog on the Llyn peninsula. The grounds are registered for the well preserved walled garden, probably dating to the 1820s, with informal layout and good plantations alongside the drive and around the house. The grounds have important group value with the principal building, Cefnamwlch house and its associated estate outbuildings and garden structures. The house (LB: 4222; NPRN: 26236) is situated in wooded grounds within which is a walled garden. Cefnamwlch does not have parkland in the accepted sense, and does not appear to have had any in 1888, when the 1st edition 25-in. Ordnance Survey map was surveyed. Early manuscript Ordnance Survey mapping of about 1820 shows the plantations in place but less extensive than they are now and lacking the strips alongside the drives, which were laid out between 1820 and 1888. It also shows the older house still standing, corner-to-corner with the present eighteenth- to early nineteenth-century house, and aligned with the early seventeenth-century gatehouse (LB:19428). By the time the first edition 25-in. map was surveyed, in 1888, the old house had gone and the plantations had expanded. Between 1889 and 1900 there was little obvious further change, but by 1918 the plantations to the west of the main drive extended still further. The overriding concern in an otherwise extremely exposed, plateau location surrounded by open farmland was the provision of shelter, which would have been necessary from the time when the first house was built on the site. The house and garden are enclosed in woodland, and the main drive is similarly protected. The open space around the house (mostly to the north and east) enjoys an improved microclimate created by the surrounding trees, which also offer a backdrop for the rhododendrons and other ornamental shrubs planted on the inner edges of the woodland. The main drive is more than 1km long. It enters the estate at Lower Lodge (LB: 19429; 19430) and approaches the house from the north. The rear drive approaches from the south, via the Home Farm, with Mountain Lodge (LB: 19431) at the entrance. A former drive, with no lodge, approaching from the south-east was disused by 1888. The informal gardens lie mostly to the north and east of the house and are surrounded by the wooded grounds. The original garden area would probably have contained an orchard and kitchen garden, with possibly a formal ornamental garden near the house, but no clear traces of early features can now be identified. The present layout is probably of the early nineteenth century, all more or less contemporary, including the walled garden (LB: 19438). The redesign of the garden likely coincided with the demolition of the older house (NPRN: 26238), probably in the 1820s. The walled garden is used mainly as an ornamental area but with areas reserved for growing fruit and vegetables. It was always, as now, as much a part of the pleasure grounds as a functional food-production area. The garden is sub-rectangular and defined by walls of handmade brick, about 3m high on two sides, less so on the west and south, and now with several entrances. It contains an irregular layout of gravel paths dividing the interior into several unequal sections and a two-storey square plan summerhouse of red brick (LB: 19439) contemporary with the walled garden. Most of the enclosed area is now lawns. The path layout has a focal point near the centre in the form of an octagonal sundial (LB: 19440) which is neither dated nor inscribed, and was probably moved from the lawn opposite the main entrance to the house after 1918. Most of the rest of the garden is lawn with a partially disused path layout which may be of the same date. There are many large, old specimen trees, both coniferous and broadleaved, in the planted areas of the lawn, though fewer than there once were, and they include beech, lime, yew, pine and sweet chestnut. Several appear to be much older, notably an enormous multi-stemmed yew and a very large sweet chestnut. Part of the area to the west of the house has now been made into a sheltered small flower garden with an informal sitting area. Setting: The house and garden at Cefnamwlch are hidden by plantations, which in turn are surrounded by farmland, with further shelter belts along field boundaries, stream-sides and the drives. The site, only two or three kilometres from the north coast of the Lleyn Peninsula, just south of and slightly higher than the village of Tudweiliog, is extremely exposed. Source: Cadw 1998: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales: Conwy, Gwynedd & the Isle of Anglesey, 174-9 (ref: PGW(Gd)23(GWY).