PGW(Gm)43(GLA)

Llantrithyd Place  

II*  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Vale of Glamorgan  

Llancarfan  

304896  

173550  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Walled deer park; formal gardens with terraces, ponds, raised walk and gazebo  

Mid-sixteenth century; late sixteenth century - early seventeenth century (garden); mid-seventeenth century (deer park)  

Llantrithyd Place is located in the Vale of Glamorgan, about 5km east of Cowbridge. It is registered for the remarkable survival, unaltered, of the structure of an important sixteenth-century garden and of a mid seventeenth-century deer park. The garden is of some complexity, with terraces, ponds and walks, including an unusually sophisticated raised walk up to a look-out mount, or gazebo. The walled deer park is exceptionally complete. The park and gardens are associated with three prominent Glamorgan families: the Bassets and Mansels in the sixteenth century and the Aubreys in the seventeenth. The garden earthworks are a Scheduled Monument (GM555). There is group value with the Grade II Listed ruins of the house (LB 13594) and the nearby Grade II* Listed Church of St Illtyd (LB 13609) which contains monuments relating to the Aubrey, Mansel and Basset families. The registered area lies on two sites, separated by a distance of about 1km: the deer-park to the north, and the garden to the south. The deer-park lies to the north-east of the house and garden. It was the park of the Aubrey family, created by Sir John Aubrey probably after the Restoration in 1660. It is entirely bounded by a mortared rubble stone wall, up to 2.7m high, with a well-preserved entrance gateway flanked by square piers c.3.5m high in the east wall. Another similar gateway lies in the south wall. Shelter belts of mixed deciduous trees have been planted around the circuit. In the south-west corner a culvert at the foot of the wall takes a stream under the road. To its immediate west is a small, funnel-shaped enclosure, the culling pen, bounded by collapsed walls. The interior is largely open, unfenced grassland on rolling ground with trees dotted across it. Running north-south down the centre is a Beech Hanger Wood. The highest point is to the east of the wood and on the ridge top are the ruins of the park lodge. The east side is dotted with old pollards of oak, beech, sycamore and a few ash. To the west of the wood the ground drops steeply to a flat-bottomed valley, called the Upper Valley in the northern half of the park, the Lower Valley in the southern. The flat valley floor is uninterrupted meadow alongside which a mostly channelled stream flows. At the north end the stream runs into a small pond. In the Lower Valley a long, funnel-shaped area - the Stallion Paddock - is enclosed by a ruined wall narrowing on the south towards the culling pen. Beyond the north end wall is an ancient pond. Llantrithyd Place, to the south, was entered off the road which bounds the north-west side of the property, leading to an outer court or garden terrace to the south-west of the house. The garden lies mostly to the east and south-east of the house ruins, in the small valley of the Nant Llantriddyd. The ground slopes down to the valley floor from the house, and from the churchyard on the west, and then rises more steeply on the east side of the valley. The valley widens out at the south end of the gardens, with woodland on the slope to the south-east and pasture to the south-west. The garden constitutes a complex formal layout of terraces, walks, water channels and ponds. From the house it was reached by a wide walkway leading south-eastwards from a doorway in the early seventeenth-century extension to the house, an area previously part of the garden. This walkway is the backbone of the entire garden, running straight from the house down into the valley and up the other side to a look-out mount or gazebo. To the north of the walk the garden is laid out with two terraces below the churchyard, buildings and ponds below and a further terrace to the east of the canalised stream. To the south of the walk is a large garden enclosure, through which the canalised stream runs, that may have held a further fishpond. The two halves of the garden were connected by a walk which ran underneath the raised walk, opposite the second terrace. The gardens are probably sixteenth-century in date, made when the house was built in the mid sixteenth century by John Thomas Basset, and were added to by Anthony Mansel later in the century. The property was abandoned by the Aubreys in the early nineteenth century. Setting - Llantrithyd Place is located in the rolling countryside of South Glamorgan. The house is in ruins and the gardens are reduced to earthworks. The deer-park is very well preserved though active quarrying is taking place just outside its north-west corner. The park is still actively managed as a deer-park with two herds, one of fallow deer and one of red. Significant views - The location of the park lodge on high ground would have afforded panoramic views of the surrounding countryside. The look-out mount, or gazebo, in the garden would have offered fine views across the countryside to the south-east, possibly as far as the Bristol Channel beyond. Sources: Cadw 2000: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Glamorgan, 254-9 (ref: PGW(Gm)43(GLA)).