PGW(Gm)68(SWA)

Penrice Castle  

I  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Swansea  

Penrice  

249906  

187865  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Landscape park; pleasure ground; garden; kitchen garden  

1773-1813; 1893-96; 1925; 1967-68.  

Penrice is registered at grade I as one of the most outstanding, complete eighteenth-century landscapes in Wales. Its landscaping is of exceptional quality, rarity and state of preservation. The situation is one of exceptional beauty and this has been exploited to the full by the positioning of the house and the landscaping around it. Thomas Mansel Talbot undertook a comprehensive scheme at Penrice engaging leading experts in their field, including William Emes (1729/30-1803) one of the most important landscape designers of the eighteenth-century, who probably also designed the orangery. The ruined medieval castle is well situated in the landscape, viewed as a picturesque feature and also as a viewing point. The registered park and garden has important group value with Penrice Castle mansion and the associated estate buildings and structures. The park is situated to the north-west of Oxwich Bay, starting at sea level behind the dunes of Oxwich Burrows and rising northwards to about 70m above sea level at Home Farm (LB: 11544;11720; 22543; 25677) in its north corner. The ground is undulating and in places falling steeply southwards towards the valley of the Nicholaston Pill, with cliff faces and rocky outcrops. The park is a classic landscape park, part open, part wooded, with some extensive areas of woodland, scattered individual trees and clumps. The medieval ruined castle of Penrice (scheduled monument GM047; LB: 11543) dominates the slope behind the house (LB: 11531) and has been landscaped into the park. The whole forms one of the most attractive landscape parks in Wales, the design and siting of the house taking advantage of the rolling topography, the supply of water, the medieval castle and the spectacular views across the park and Oxwich Bay. The park is surrounded by a rubble-stone wall, 1.2m-2m high, on all but the south, marsh, side. The house stands in the centre of the northern half of the park and is reached by four drives, from the east (LB: 23541; 23550; 11535), west (LB: 22541), north (LB: 22540) and southeast (LB: 22542) each with formal entrances with gates, railings and piers probably added in the early 1790s. The principal entrance is from the east at Penrice Towers gatehouse, at the junction of the A4118 and the road to Oxwich. The entrance at the Towers (LB: 11535; 23541; 23550) is designed as a romantic castle ruin with sham ruined walls. Topographically, the park can be divided into the higher northern part, to the north and east of the house; the valley to the south, below the house, which contains the lake; the higher ground to the south of the lake, ‘The Sling’; and the marsh. The higher, northern part of the park contains most of its woodland. Immediately behind the house the ground is open and rises steeply to the medieval castle, which is built on a rocky crag and forms a spectacular and dramatic feature dominating the centre of the park. A number of ornamental features that date to about 1811 are situated within the woodland west of the castle. Near the middle is a small grotto consisting of an alcove of waterworn limestone with arched opening. To the west is an area of ornamental features that was referred to as the Children’s Garden and reached by a zigzag path from the house. The wood continues to the west boundary of the park and to its south, near the west entrance, is an icehouse. The upper part of the park to the east and south-east of the house is laid out with a largely open gently rolling area on the east side and a belt of woodland, the Beech Grove - mixed deciduous woodland - on the west side. The ground slopes down towards the valley, quite steeply in places, with some rocky outcrops and cliffs. The open, gently rolling area is dotted with oak and sycamore trees. The valley of the Nicholaston Pill runs from west to east across the middle of the park, its foot being largely occupied by a long and sinuous ornamental lake, flanked by open parkland slopes on either side, planted with trees which are both isolated and in clumps. The lake has two, elongated, small islands. Two springs on the north shore of the lake were turned into ornamental features with rockwork around them. ‘The Sling’, the southern part of the park on the south side of the valley, is sloping open grassland ornamented with scattered trees, including lime, oriental plane, beech and sweet chestnut, with some rhododendron under-planting. There are two small woods: Birch Wood, on the west boundary, and Butler’s Wood, south of the lake. To the south the park is mostly open grassland. The final part of the park is Oxwich Marsh and has been included as the design of its drainage scheme, and in particular the sinuous continuation of the lake (the Fishpond), has both an ornamental and utilitarian purpose and combined the aim of agricultural improvement with an extension of the landscaping. The marsh is now a heavily overgrown area of freshwater, boggy ground, through which runs the Fishpond. Now mostly silted and hidden from view by reeds and willow, this lake is divided into three sections by the Oxwich road. An enclosed pleasure ground was created in the early 1790s as a garden oasis within the park. It lies some 450m to the south-east of the house, on sloping ground just to the west of the kitchen garden. The pleasure ground is sub-rectangular on plan, long axis east by west, enclosed by a rubble-stone wall up to 1.5m high. The south side is mostly bounded by a revetment wall, while on the east it is bounded by the kitchen garden and frameyard. The pleasure garden retains its original informal layout with a network of paths throughout, flowerbeds, mixed shrubs, areas of exposed rock, and plantings of mixed trees. Planted areas around the garden are varied. At the top of the garden trees and shrubs include oak, yew, holly, camellia and rhododendron with an exposed rock face and a rockery slope. In the lower part of the garden plantings include conifers, turkey oaks and camellias. There is also some exposed rock in this part of the garden. A stone-edged path flanked by mixed shrubs leads from a gate in the west side to an orangery, dating to the 1790s (LB: 23548). Below it is a gently sloping lawn fringed with specimen trees and shrubs, including a stone pine and other conifers, and large copper beeches. At the east end of the pleasure ground is a rock garden, waterfall and lily pond, created and planted in about 1930, using water pumped from the lake below but now disused. The garden is situated to the south and east of the house, on ground sloping gently southwards. On plan the overall area forms a rectangle aligned north-east by south-west, the house in the west corner, and the parkland beyond. It forms three main sections: an informal area in the eastern half; a formal, terraced garden in the western half; and a formal garden on the site of the demolished 1890s wing of the house. Until the 1890s the garden next to the house was completely informal, shown on the 1878 Ordnance Survey map occupying the same area as at present, except at the west end, which only extended as far as the east end of the original house. The park swept up to the main part of the house. The garden was informal both in outline and in planting, with a path running along the south boundary to a gate into the park; this layout is shown on a photograph of 1893. When the Victorian wing was added in about 1895 the present-day terraced garden was laid out and the Macfarlane conservatory added. The kitchen garden is located at the far south-east end of the park on south-facing ground, towards the Oxwich road on the east, the frameyard and pleasure garden adjacent on the west. It was created at the same time as the park, 1770s-1782. It is broadly rectangular on plan, long axis north by south, and is divided into four unequal compartments. The northernmost compartment is a D-shaped area, its north wall curving, and is narrower than the adjacent bay. Walls are about 4m high, stone internally lined with brick. On the north side of the cross wall are buildings which include bothies and the former head gardener’s office. At its west end is a doorway into the pleasure garden. The second compartment (from the top) has walls up to 4m high. It contains all the glasshouses, which are ranged along the north wall and in front of it. These include a large Messenger glasshouse. Outside, to the west, is the former frameyard, a small area with a curving stone wall around its west side. It contains a ruined boiler house, which heated the former conservatory. The third compartment, also sloping, is below the cross wall about 3.5m high. The remains of whitewash and wiring indicate that this was a glazed peach wall dismantled in about 1950. The west wall, like the east wall, is stepped down the slope and has a wide opening in it. The south wall is about 3m high, with a door in the curving south-east corner, the wall stepped down to about 1.9m. The fourth compartment, to the south, is enclosed by brick walls about 3.5m-4m high on all but the south side which is a rubblestone revetment wall about 1.3m high. This continues westwards to the lower end of the frameyard. At its east end is the former head gardener’s house. Significant Views: The design of the landscape park and the siting of the house takes full advantage of the rolling topography and the spectacular views of Oxwich Bay. On approaching from the east the house, with the medieval castle behind, only comes into view when the drive reaches the bluff, giving a sense of surprise and delight. A walled walk ran along the top of the south wall of the medieval castle, thought to have been added in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth-century to provide family and visitors with stunning views of the house, park and Oxwich bay beyond. There are many attractive views across the park of the valley and lake, particularly from the house and garden, the castle and the west and south-east drives. Sources: Cadw 2000: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales: Additional and Revised Entries, 54-63 (ref: PGW(Gm)68(SWA)). Ordnance Survey First Edition six-inch map, sheet: Glamorgan XXXI (1878).