PGW(Gm)9(RCT)

Miskin Manor  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Rhondda Cynon Taff  

Pont-y-Clun  

305413  

180493  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Landscape park; Victorian and Edwardian pleasure grounds and gardens; walled kitchen garden.  

1857 to about 1914  

The registered area at Miskin Manor comprises the nineteenth century landscape park, Victorian and Edwardian pleasure grounds and gardens, and an ornamented walled kitchen garden with the remains of a canal and pool. The well-preserved Edwardian terraced garden includes some fine specimen trees, yew topiary and ‘king’s beasts’ in Tudor style to complement the house. The registered grounds have group value with the house, to which they provide the setting, and its associated estate structures. Miskin Manor (LB: 13502) is a large nineteenth-century mansion built by David Williams in 1864 to replace an earlier house on the site. It is now run as a hotel. The house lies towards the south-east end of a roughly triangular park, to the south-east of Pontyclun. The park lies on rolling ground on the east side of the river Ely, bounded on the west by Miskin village, on the south-west by the river, on the south by the M4 and on the east by the A4119. Road building in the 1960s truncated the outlying parts of the park and involved a considerable loss of trees. The early history of the park is obscure but landscaping probably dates from the eighteenth or early nineteenth-century with the main landscaping probably taking place after 1857. The principal feature of the park is the long drive, now mostly disused, from Miskin village to the west front of the house. The original, imposing, entrance is now cut off from the park, subsumed in the expanding village but it had a small single-storey lodge, now a private dwelling. The western half of the drive is now an earthen track flanked by horse chestnuts leading to the local cricket ground. The eastern half is partly lined with horse chestnuts with some under-planting of rhododendrons. The house is now approached by a new drive from the north and via the original secondary drive leading to the service area from the east. The park is otherwise open grassland with isolated deciduous trees on the sloping ground above the river. These are mainly oak, sycamore and lime, with oak, plane and poplar to the south of the house, beyond the ha-ha. A belt of deciduous trees runs south along the steep slope next to the river, and below the garden terraces are some large specimen trees. Beyond, to the west, are some mature beeches. The main gardens lie to the east, south, and west of the house, on ground sloping down towards the Ely valley to the west. The drive sweeps round north of the house to the forecourt on the west. This is a level rectangular area, now used for car parking, which forms the revetted top terrace of a series of three descending down the slope west of the house. These terraces were originally earthen and are shown on the 1875 Ordnance Survey and may have their origins in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth-century. The layout was altered by Judge Gwilym Williams in the late nineteenth/early twentieth-century when the present terrace walls were built. At its south end stone steps lead down to a wide grass path flanked by a box hedge on the east and the revetment wall on the west. The path leads to stone steps at the south end of the garden leading down to the woodland belt on the edge of the valley. At its north end flights of steps descend to the middle terrace, a lawn with an open-sided pavilion at its north end (LB: 23923) and steps down to the lower terrace (LB: 23924). Below the terraces to the north-west, is an area of mixed mature trees, some specimen, and a small pond below. To the south and east of the house are large terraced lawns bounded on the east and west by yew hedges with stone ‘king’s beasts’ on octagonal columns set against the taller sections. These Tudor style ornaments are mythical beasts holding copper banners. There are further pairs flanking the west entrance (LB: 23927) and the east entrance (LB: 23928) of the house. South of the house a level lawn is bounded on the south by a low ruinous dry-stone revetment wall below which is another lawn bounded by a stone ha-ha incorporating three semi-circular projections. The lawn east of the house is bounded on the east by a low stone revetment wall punctuated by taller piers topped by large ball finials. In the middle a flight of steps leads to a grass walk along the top of the revetment wall backed by a tall topiary yew hedge cut into arches. Further east is an area of mixed deciduous and coniferous woodland with a yew hedge with recesses, along the south side. Within the woodland are some large specimen trees including acers, a wellingtonia and magnolias. In the middle of an opening in the wood is a sundial on a circular base. North-west of the house is a triangular area of woodland grounds, to the north of which is the walled kitchen garden. A rock-lined stream emerges from a culvert in its wall flanked by former paths cut into the slopes above which are rows of overgrown pleached beech trees and a parallel yew hedge. Box and bamboo are also planted in the area. The west boundary is marked by a likely ha-ha. At the south end of the wood, the stream cutting forms a small valley, the grounds here are ornamented with paths, stone steps, stone bridges and a series of small ponds around which are plantings of bamboos, acers, pines, and Chusan palms. The walled kitchen garden lies to the north of the house, at the north end of the woodland grounds. A path formerly ran through the woodland from the house to the entrance in the middle of the south side of the garden. The garden is rectangular, aligned east-west, surrounded by walls about 3.5m high, of stone on the north side and brick on the remaining sides. The south wall is buttressed and has a gap at the west end. In the centre of the south wall is a section of iron railings on a low brick wall. Two stone bothies lie against the outside of the north wall. The interior layout, as portrayed in 1874, had a central ornamental layout comprising a north-south stone-lined narrow canal with brick edging, flanked by yew hedges. Water enters the garden through a culvert on the north. At the south end the canal narrows and then opens out into a circular pool from which the water ran into an underground culvert. Otherwise the interior was laid out for fruit trees. By 1898 there was a small free-standing glasshouse in the western section. The interior is now overgrown with trees but the central layout survives. But the cross and perimeter paths in the garden, either side of the canal, have become obscured. Significant Views: Views across the gardens and park facing west and south from the house and garden terraces. Sources: Cadw 2000: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Glamorgan, 140-3 (ref: PGW(Gm)9(RCT)). Ordnance Survey six-inch maps, sheet: Glamorgan XLII (editions of 1874 & 1898). Ordnance Survey 25-inch map, sheets: Glamorgan XLII.1 & 6 (1874).