PGW(Gt)26(TOR)

Pontypool Park  

II*  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Torfaen  

Trevethin  

328847  

201117  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Landscape park with shell hermitage; arboretum; walled kitchen garden.  

c. 1811-1840; 1850s  

Pontypool Park is registered for its early nineteenth-century landscape park which later became a public park. Parkland features include an outstanding and well-preserved shell hermitage and an unusual twin ice-house. There is also a mid-nineteenth-century arboretum, the American Gardens, including early plantings of American conifers. The registered area has group value with the former house, stables, estate cottages (LB: 3119; 3120; 16072), the remains of the walled garden and surviving park structures. Pontypool Park occupies an area of steeply undulating ground to the north of the centre of Pontypool. The land of the park was bought by Capel Hanbury (1625-1704) in 1677 and 1689. To the east of the Nant y Gollen stream, a deer park was formed by Major John Hanbury (1664-1734) in about 1700. By 1752 the main drive was in existence with an elaborate pair of wrought iron gates (LB: 18466) at the entrance at Pontymoel Bridge. The park remained more or less in its natural state of open grassland and deciduous woodland until the improvements of Capel Hanbury Leigh (1776-1861) at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In the second half of the eighteenth century, Capel Hanbury built a folly on the ridge top to the north of the park. This was rebuilt as a hexagonal castellated tower in 1837 and was demolished in 1940 (NPRN: 407295). It was then rebuilt in the 1990s. Between the folly and the shell hermitage is a small cottage, Pen y Parc, which was formerly a gamekeeper’s cottage. The shell hermitage/grotto (LB: 3112) was built in the 1830s and is believed to have been the inspiration of Molly Mackworth, Capel Hanbury Leigh’s wife. It is situated on the ridge-top near the east boundary of the park and from the ridge-top there are panoramic views. It was used by the Hanbury family for picnics. The whole of the interior wall and ceiling surface was plastered and decorated in patterns of shells, and with quartz, spar, mica and other reflective crystals. The patterning includes stars, flowers and geometric designs. Restoration of the shell grotto was completed in 1996. Aside from a section in the middle on which the Penygarn estate is built, the park remains intact, although the southern half has been heavily utilised in the twentieth century for modern leisure facilities, including the addition of the leisure centre and dry ski-slope in the 1970s. To the north of the Penygarn estate lies the American Gardens, a large arboretum planted in the 1850s with conifers newly introduced from America. Some very large specimens remain. At the north end of the woodland is a Rustic Lodge, an early nineteenth-century cottage ornée, originally the woodkeeper’s cottage. Capel Hanbury’s Leigh’s improvements to the park also included an unusual double ice-house (LB: 18811–built 1827-8), built into the slope across the drive from the stable block. The Nant y Gollen stream was dammed to form a lake (altered to form two small lakes in the 1970s). The ‘Italian Gardens’ were made by John Capel Hanbury (1853-1921), formal garden planted with exotic plants. To the north of the house is a walled kitchen garden, located on higher ground sloping gently north-east/south-west. It is enclosed around most of its perimeter with a stone wall of variable height, lined on the inside with brick. The garden is reached from the house by a steep narrow path at the west end of the shrubbery. The interior of the garden has been redeveloped. It has a road running north-west/south-east down the middle (on the site of the former central path). To the east it is taken up with allotments, with the central cross path (tarmac) remaining and to the west by a Residential Home, with the rest of the area turfed over. The park passed into public ownership in 1920 and various recreational facilities were added to the south end of the park: children’s play area (1920), Gorsedd stones (1923), tennis courts (1924), bowling green (1925), rugby ground (1925), bandstand (1931). Significant Views: There are panoramic views in all directions from the folly tower. Views east from the shell grotto. Sources: Cadw 1994: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Gwent, 127-8 (ref: PGW(Gt)26).