PGW(Gd)34(GWY)

Nannau  

II*  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Gwynedd  

Llanelltyd  

273998  

320535  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Large park with deer park and scenic walk, remains of extensive path/ride system; two walled kitchen gardens and small walled ornamental area; lawned grounds with ponds.  

Late eighteenth century; first half of nineteenth century.  

The registered area at Nannau represents the remains of an extensive late eighteenth-century landscape park, with earlier walled deer park and a scenic walk. It is formerly one of the largest and highest areas of designed landscape in Wales. The registered area includes surviving fragments of ancient woodland and a range of interesting and varied built features. It is the ancestral seat of the Nannau family and from the late eighteenth-century the estate passed to the Vaughans. The registered area has group value with the listed house at Nannau and associated estate buildings and park structures. Nannau is situated a few kilometres to the north-east of Dolgellau, high up on the west flank of Foel Offrwm Mountain. The present house (LB: 4710) built in 1794-6, is over 230m above sea level. Whether the original, medieval house was on the same site or located within the adjacent deer park is uncertain. Although probably medieval in origin, the core of the present park was likely laid out in the seventeenth-century. It was then enlarged into a great romantic, designed landscape - much of which survives - in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century, mostly by Sir Richard Williams Vaughan. This incorporated the deer park and other pre-existing elements, and led to the present layout of the grounds, construction of drives, lodges, gates, arches and eye-catchers, and the planting of vast numbers of trees. The house, and adjacent home farm, lies towards the park’s north-east boundary. The park is well known for its extent and altitude. It is situated on a ridge between the rivers Mawddach and Wnion, on rocky and uneven terrain. When viewed from the south (the main approach) the rugged backdrop of mountains and forests provides a striking setting for the house. The entire designed landscape included the deer park, tracts of woodland (including small areas of ancient woodland) and areas of open moorland as well as parkland in the sense of large, grazed enclosures dotted with planted specimen trees and some ancient trees. The original park was very extensive and undefined, blending into designed estate land and then natural landscape. The main deer park lies some way to the south of the house, south-east of Hen Ardd and Howel Sele Lodge. It is a large expanse of fairly rough grazing, with bracken and other coarse vegetation, on a rocky hillside. The deer park contains two fish ponds, shown on old maps and still containing water. Much of the deer park wall is still intact. The estate was once served by an extensive system of rides and drives some of which have fallen out of use, others surviving as forestry or farm tracks. The drive leading to the farm is now also the main approach to the house. The main drive was formerly from the south, through Coed-y-moch, with a Tudor style lodge (LB: 16047; 16048 – built 1830s) carriage arch and iron gates (LB: 16049). Another long drive approached through the deer park from the south-east, now mostly disused, with Deer Park Lodge (formerly Lower Lodge) at the entrance where the drive crosses the wall. Howel Sele Lodge (LB: 16050) formerly Upper Lodge, is also on this drive, set into the opposite wall of the deer park, with an arched gateway and an iron gate alongside (LB: 16051). There is a small, square, stone-built tower, known as the 'watch tower', in the deer park on the hillside just east of Hen Ardd, south of Howel Sele Lodge, and another similar one nearer the lodge, in a poorer state of repair. It seems likely to have been chiefly a folly or eye-catcher, possibly inter-visible with the 'summer house' outside the park to the south. A smaller area immediately south-east of the house, is also named 'Deer Park' on the 25-in Ordnance Survey map of 1889. At this date it was well scattered with trees and it seems unlikely that it was originally part of the deer park; it now has a completely different appearance from the main deer park, and is much like some of the other areas of parkland. Also in the park, west of the house, is Llyn Cynwch, which forms part of the circular Precipice Walk. It is a circular walk, and a short distance from Gwern-offeriaid the point is reached where one can go south-westwards alongside Llyn Cynwch, or north-eastwards across the open hillside. Taking the latter direction, almost immediately wide views open up and for most of the length of the walk, until one rounds the shoulder of the hill back towards Llyn Cynwch, there are superb views over the Mawddach valley, to the mountains and sea beyond. The layout of the grounds around the house is simple, intended to fit in with the surrounding parkland and the natural landscape. There is no formal garden, being mostly lawned with groups of trees and shrubs. It has very little structure, aside from the old kitchen garden to the east which was open on the house side suggesting its function was partly ornamental. Although this ‘new’ kitchen garden is long out of use it superseded an even older one to the south (‘Hen Ardd’, 400837). A series of three ponds (present in 1794), oddly sited behind the house, constructed in what was a boggy small stream valley, were possibly fish ponds as well as garden features. Alongside the northernmost pond, opposite the stable block, is a small rectangular walled enclosure of uncertain function but possibly a paddock. A small detached portion of garden lies some distance away, adjacent to the old kitchen garden. It consists of a walled pentagonal area through which a drive passes, with some small terraces below it and a shrubbery area above. North-east of the house are three small dry-stonewalled terraces with traces of herbaceous plantings. A lawn slopes gently downwards from the front of the house to the park fence. There is little planting here other than in the eastern area between the house and kitchen garden. A sundial marked on early maps has now disappeared. On the lawn north-east of the house there are specimen trees, planted singly and in groups, and include copper beech, Irish yew and cypress. Large single Irish yews lie close to the house. A range of specimen trees are planted on the bank above the drive and the grassy area below it. At Nannau there were two kitchen gardens. Hen Ardd (Old Garden) of the late eighteenth-century (1790s), contemporary with the present house, is located almost 1km to the south, between the road from Dolgellau to Llanfachreth and the old deer park wall, while the ‘new’ kitchen garden lies much nearer to it, apparently having superseded the older garden shortly before 1838. The survival of a few old fruit trees in the old garden, and the 1889 Ordnance Survey map showing part of the attached enclosure to the north of it as an orchard, suggests the old garden remained partially in use for fruit production. A plaque on the wall by the east gate shows a date of 1794, which confirms this time period. The occupied cottage (named ‘Hen Ardd’) also seems contemporary with the garden and main house. The garden walls are of mortared stone, up to 3.5 m high, with wide entrances on the east and west and a narrower one on the south; there is also a doorway by the east end of the cottage. There is a date of 1828 on a stone arch on the east which used to mark the entrance to the garden from one of the former drives which once passed through the garden. Holes through the garden walls allowed branches to be trained and grow on either side, the fruit on each side ripening at different times and so extending the season. In 1818, the garden had been sub-divided by paths into nine sections though no traces survive. A stream runs the whole length of the garden. There is access to this on the north where a small water garden has since been made, and near the south entrance where the water is almost two metres below ground level, reached by steps. After the garden moved, Hen Ardd cottage became the keeper's cottage, and the now-ruined kennels to the north and buildings to the south (perhaps pigsties and pigs' kitchen, possibly a pheasantry), within the garden walls, date from this time. The kennels contain a date plaque of 1835. There was once a sundial on the spot where The Howel Sele Oak once stood. There are no signs of any glass buildings on early maps of the garden. The later kitchen garden, dating from around 1838, is rectangular with its long axis running north-north-east to south-south-west. The interior of the garden is terraced and was subdivided but much of the internal layout, especially the lower (southern) part of the garden, has been removed by the construction of a hard tennis court. Along the north end of the garden is a high wall (3.5 m approx.) built of a pale brick, on the inside of which a range of glasshouses once stood. Along the outside of the wall is a range of buildings, of stone and brick, formerly potting sheds, boiler house and stores; this has since been used as kennels. Along the south end of the eastern part of the garden, beyond the path, is another high wall, formerly the rear wall of the peach house. Further garden areas to the north-east have now disappeared under an extension to the farmyard and buildings. Significant Views: Superb views from the Precipice Walk over the Mawddach Valley to the mountains and sea beyond. Views across the park to the folly eye-catcher and from it towards the summerhouse at Berthlwyd (Coed summerhouse). From the house across the park facing southeast. Setting: Nannau is situated on a ridge between the rivers Mawddach and Wnion, about 3 km north-north-east of Dolgellau. The terrain is rocky and uneven, not perhaps an obvious choice for conversion to parkland, but the dramatic setting of the house, with a rugged backdrop of mountains and forests is striking. Sources: Cadw 1998: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales: Conwy, Gwynedd & the Isle of Anglesey, 224-9 (ref: PGW(Gd)34(GWY)). Ordnance Survey second edition 25-inch map: sheet Merionethshire XXXIII.11 (1901) https://nannau.wales/land/yr-hen-ardd-the-old-garden/