PGW(Gd)35(GWY)

Parc  

II*  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Gwynedd  

Llanfrothen  

262652  

343922  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Small park with industrial features overlaid, neglected terraced gardens of an early date, buildings of interest.  

Possibly sixteenth and probably seventeenth century, later twentieth-century additions.  

Registered as the rare survival of exceptional stone-built garden terraces, probably of seventeenth-century date and set within a contemporary small walled park, which includes a gatehouse and viewpoint. The registered area has group value with the unit-planned development at Parc and associated features. It also has historical associations with Clough Williams-Ellis, who made improvements in the 1950s and 60s. Parc is hidden away in the foothills to the north-east of the Traeth Mawr plain, in a secluded setting with wide views, a great variety of terrain and vegetation, and in stark contrast with the steep and craggy slopes around. It was the ancient and chief seat of the Anwyls, one of the most notable families of Meirionedd in the Tudor and Stuart periods, who settled at Parc by the mid-sixteenth century and possibly earlier. Early settlement at the site focused on several adjacent houses built on the ‘unit system’, the earliest now reduced to foundations. The houses and farm lie roughly in the centre of the contemporary walled park, which occupies a rectangular area between two parallel streams, the Afon Maesgwm and the Afon Croesor, the long axis running south-west to north-east. The original park was probably smaller than at present but enlarged, probably during the eighteenth century, to include the large field in the northern corner and the wooded area north and north-east of the old drive. The two streams are both in fairly steep valleys, and the ground between them rises to a flattened ridge on which the buildings stand. This plateau undulates, with rocky outcrops, one of which was cut away to build the first house. Another, higher up to the north, has also been quarried, the resulting smooth faces covered in graffiti from the seventeenth-century onwards. The current main drive enters the park on the north-east from a sharp bend in the road, leading straight into the farmyard (LB: 4816; 19842) bypassing the gatehouse (LB: 4818) and the houses (LB: 4817; 4773). The drive is flanked by beech and lime trees planted in the twentieth-century. The old drive left the road lower down, before the sharp bends, and little of its course can now be seen. There is a viewpoint in the park, to the south-west, a circular mound commanding magnificent views. As the estate was small and unprofitable the park was probably always relatively intensively farmed and is unlikely to have ever been very different from its present condition: most of the area under pasture; woodland on the steeper parts; scattered trees in the grazed areas. Along the valley south-west of the houses, to the south boundary of the park and particularly in the area of Park Quarry, trees of mixed age, especially beech and larch, are planted. Oaks in the quarry area were planted by Clough Williams-Ellis and some very large beeches pre-date the quarry by many years. The character of the park has been changed by an industrial stratum overlying the earlier landscape. An incline/tramway, serving Croesor quarry to the north-east, now divides the farmed part of the park from a rougher area within the north-west boundary. A small quarry belonging to the estate, in the southern and south-west extreme of the park, is out of use with disused buildings, tips and tramways in and around the valley of the Maesgwm. The gardens of the estate lie on the north-western slope of the Maesgwm valley, below and to the north-east of the houses. The main gardens were laid out during the seventeenth-century, probably by William Lewis Anwyl. The present small vegetable garden, opposite the first (sixteenth-century) house, is possibly the oldest surviving garden on the site. The bard Huw Machno, in celebrating the life of the recently deceased Anwyl in the 1640s, mentions gardens, walls, orchards, parks and 'fair towers'. The main drive from the north-east passes through the main garden area dominated by three massive terraces (LB: 19843;19844) descending to the south-east, each up to 45m long and 15m wide (150ft by 50ft), retained by massively-built dry-stone walls, their ends enclosed by partly ruined walls up to 3.5m high. A ruined small, square structure towards the southern end of the middle wall is possibly a tower base. There are signs of at least two rougher terraces across the slopes below the later houses, and the whole area is enclosed within a wall, as is a long, narrow, now boggy strip running along below this area and the main terraces, filling the space between these and the engineered track alongside the river. This walling suggests the enclosed areas were once also part of the gardens but their status and layout can now only be guessed. The upper walled area may always have been woodland, as shelter for the houses. South of the farm buildings is an enclosure 40m square surrounded by a stone wall 1.5m high which may have originated as a garden. Some slight bumps, possibly former plant beds, are the only clues to its former layout (LB: 19847). Opposite the first house, and separated from it by a small yard, lies a walled garden possibly contemporary with this house and the oldest surviving garden on the site. The garden measures about 25m by 12m, and is terraced out at the top of the steep part of the Maesgwm valley, and is walled all round. The upper north-west wall, at least partly rebuilt, consists of a retaining wall up to 2m high capped by a free-standing wall a little over 1m high on average. The other walls are more massively built, presumably all more or less original, although the central section of the south-east wall has been lowered at some point, probably to allow appreciation of the view for which small window openings here allow glimpses. A small niche in each of the end walls were possibly bee boles. On the far side of the south-west wall is the base of a structure which may have been a tower of some sort. Significant Views: Views to the southwest from the viewpoint in the park - the plateau begins to fall away quite steeply about 200m south-west of the house site, and on the extreme edge of the high ground - the tip of the ridge - is a circular mound which commands a magnificent view. Views also to the southeast from the small kitchen garden. Source: Cadw 1998: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales: Conwy, Gwynedd & the Isle of Anglesey, 230-34 (ref: PGW(Gd)35(GWY).