PGW(Gm)41(GLA)

Hensol Castle  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Vale of Glamorgan  

Pendoylan  

304391  

178779  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Landscape park; pleasure grounds; formal garden; walled kitchen garden  

Mid-eighteenth century; 1840s  

Registered for the survival of the main features of an important mid-eighteenth century landscape park associated with a major house that is an early example of the gothic style in Wales. Surviving features include a large lake and serpentine pond, ornamental bridges, entrance lodge, island folly and a walled garden. Hensol Castle (LB:13482) is situated in rolling countryside on the west side of the Ely valley, to the south of Llantrisant. The mansion lies towards the eastern side of its medium-sized landscape park. The park was developed from the mid-eighteenth century onwards, with a major phase of ornamentation during the 1840s for the industrialist Rowland Fothergill (1794-1871) who bought the estate in 1838. There may have been earlier work on it, as Sir Edward Mansell of Margam wrote in 1677 that David Jenkins of Hensall (sic), aged 42, was 'intending the improvement of his estate'. There is evidence for eighteenth-century improvement, and in particular planting: Benjamin Heath Malkin in 1804 recorded that it was William, Lord Talbot, who planted the park 'on the inseparable principles of good taste and utility; indeed, from him it derives all its finished improvements'. Malkin also noted that there was a 'very fine piece of artificial water, measuring twenty-five acres', and a five and a half-acre pond between the house and the mill. The grounds he found in general 'rich and pleasing'. It is clear, therefore, that the major landscaping, including the lake and ponds, had already taken place before 1804. The 1877 Ordnance Survey map shows all the main features of the park, and these have remained more or less intact to this day. In 1927 the house and grounds were sold to Glamorgan County Council to be used as a hospital. The house is now a conference and wedding venue and the hospital complex converted to apartments. The park is orientated north-east by south-west on rolling ground, the highest part being a ridge at the west end. The main entrance is in the north-east side of the park, flanked by incurving iron railings on stone plinths ending in square stone piers, rubble stone boundary walls either side. To the north is a mid-nineteenth century entrance lodge (LB: 13467). The drive is flanked by mixed trees including horse chestnut, beech and cypress, and runs westwards over a gently arched stone bridge (LB: 13483) before curving south-west towards the east side of the house. The centre of the park is occupied by a large lake which lies just west of the house. On an island near its west shore is a turreted stone folly (NPRN: 96337). To the east of the house a smooth grass slope is dotted with specimen trees, cedars and horse chestnut, running down to level ground on which there are playing fields. Beyond is an inverted S-shaped pond (Mill Pond). The park has shrunk on its western side which once included the whole ridge as far west as a lane beyond Kennel Grove, with a number of clumps on the ridge top. The far western side is now purely agricultural, while the parkland to the immediate west and south of the lake is mostly in use as a golf course on which there has been some new planting. At the south-west end of the park is Coed Llwyn-yoy, a mixed deciduous woodland containing Llwyn-yoy Pond, which is of some antiquity, appearing on the 1877 map. The pleasure grounds fall into two main areas: the gardens immediately around the house, and, the wooded grounds around the north end of the lake. The gardens are of two main characters and phases: the informally laid out areas east and west of the house; and the formal garden south of the house. The informal areas probably owe their present appearance and layout mainly to the post-1838 phase of alterations and were in place by 1877 when there was no garden on the south. The gardens are shown as informally planted with mixed deciduous and coniferous trees and shrubs, with winding paths through them, bounded by the lake on the west. Today the layout is unchanged, with level or gently sloping lawns and informally grouped mixed trees and shrubs. To the east a sloping lawn above the drive is sparsely planted with a few specimen trees. West of the house are many fine specimen trees, including beech, yew, cypress, a tulip tree, and wellingtonia. South of the house, and post-dating 1927, is a large level lawn with a central north-south path on the axis of the front door of the house. In the centre of the lawn the path forms a circle around a raised plinth topped by a dome of clipped box. At the south end a flight of steps flanked by privet descends to a tarmac drive to the former hospital complex, now converted to apartments. On the south the lawn is bounded by a shrub border. The strip of wooded grounds around the northern end of the lake is approached via a path across the top of the lake dam. It is an area of mainly beech and oak woodland under-planted with yews and rhododendrons, with a path, the 'Tulip Walk', running through the wood, looping around its western margin. The wood is bounded on the north by a ha-ha suggesting an eighteenth-century origin. The kitchen garden lies to the north of the house, east of the lake dam. The garden is rectangular and enclosed by rubble stone walls. The north wall is stepped. The central feature of the interior is the overflow stream from the lake which runs west-east through the garden in a straight, stone-lined channel with side walls. It is crossed by an arched stone footbridge with no parapets. The channel is stepped down the slope and formerly had two sluices, visible as grooves in the stone walls and stone blocks making a small cascade across the channel. Against the north wall are the remains of glasshouses. The garden is shown in its present form on the 1877 Ordnance Survey map when it was laid out with a perimeter path and several cross paths to the canal. It had one large and one small glasshouse against the north wall, corresponding to the present structures. It is probable that the garden dates to the eighteenth-century and was possibly contemporary with the lake. In 1877 the area to the north was planted as an orchard. Significant View: View from the dam across the lake towards the folly and park. Sources: Cadw 2000: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Glamorgan, 246-9 (ref: PGW(Gm)41(GLA)). Ordnance Survey Second Edition 25-inch map, sheet: Glamorgan XLII.5 & 9 (1877).