PGW(Gt)29(MON)

St. Pierre Park  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Monmouthshire  

Mathern  

351235  

190619  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Landscape park, with remnants of earlier water features, Pleasure Grounds, and walled kitchen garden.  

Sixteenth/seventeenth century; second half of eighteenth century.  

Registered for the historic interest of its eighteenth-century landscape park with origins as a medieval deer park. The registered area encompasses the landscape park, with remnants of earlier water features, pleasure grounds and walled kitchen garden. The site has historical associations with the Lewis family and important group value with the house (LB: 2009), gatehouse (LB: 2010), Portskewett Gates (LB: 24093), boundary wall (LB: 24098) and church of St Peter (LB: 2043). The house was built by the Lewis family in the late fifteenth to sixteenth century. It was remodelled in the eighteenth century by Morgan Lewis, and again in the mid/late nineteenth-century by Charles Lewis. St. Pierre Park is located south-west of Chepstow and lies mostly to the west of St Pierre House. It is bounded on the north and west by the Newport - Chepstow road (A48) and on all but the east side by a stone wall, which is medieval in origin and rebuilt as part of the eighteenth century improvements. The park has two entrances, one to the north of the house, and one to the west. The north entrance and straight drive, form the present-day access and may be the original approach, as the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century gatehouse and main entrance to the house are on this side. In the late eighteenth century a winding drive was made running from an entrance on the west side of the park to the courtyard to the north of the house, skirting the north end of the lake. In the nineteenth century a lodge was added at the west entrance and one within the park was removed. The park has medieval origins and was originally the deer park of the Lewis family. It engulfed a small medieval community of which only the church remains. It was still a deer park at the start of the twentieth century, stocked with fallow deer. Along the eastern edge, on low-lying ground, is a series of silted-up linear ponds strung out in a curve, one below the other. They are possibly of medieval origin although their development as ornamental features came later. They are shown on an estate map by John Aram of 1781, which names one as the ‘Canal’ alongside which was ‘The Long Walk’. The linear ponds are still clearly shown on the 1st ed. Ordnance Survey map of 1886. The ground is highest on the west side of the park and drops steeply down to the central part in which there is a large artificial lake of curving outline with a massive curving dam at its south end. The main phase of landscaping of the park was in the second half of the eighteenth century and the lake probably dates to this phase of development along with the west drive. The estate map of 1781 shows the upper part of the park, on the western edge, to be well wooded with circular clumps either side of the entrance and a warren to the south. The main area of the park was then mostly open but by the late nineteenth century it is shown dotted with trees, with the south boundary well wooded. The park is now largely rolling grassland, mown for golf courses, with isolated specimen trees. These are largely deciduous and some, in particular oaks, sweet chestnuts and planes, are very ancient, relics of pre-eighteenth-century park planting. The main changes in the park have come with its conversion to a hotel, country club and golf course in the twentieth century. The gardens, mostly to the south of the house, are bounded on their south side by a low stone wall and ha-ha. Named as 'The Pleasure Ground' on a map of 1781, the original outer court, to the north of the house, is now landscaped as a car park, but retains some old trees. The garden to the south of the house was in existence by 1781 and to the south of it was a melon ground and 'The Old Orchard'. Very little is now left; there are only a few large trees and a large magnolia against the south wall of the house, which was mentioned in press reports of 1910. The area to the east of the house, formerly 'The Ox Pen and Fold', later the 'Eastern Garden', has now been built on. In the 'Eastern Garden' was a grotto, but of this there is no trace. Most of the garden area is now sloping lawn and part of a golf course, including a green. The former kitchen garden lies to the west of the house on the gentle slope between the house and the lake. It is shown on the 1781 map and is named 'The Park Garden'. The garden was four-sided, and of irregular shape. Most of its walls remain largely intact but the interior now supports a number of chalets, modern roads, paths and flowerbeds. Setting: Situated on rolling ground to the southwest of Chepstow, near the Severn Estuary. Sources: Cadw 1994: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales: Gwent, 134-6 (ref: PGW (Gt)29). Ordnance Survey first-edition six-inch map: sheet Monmouthshire XXXI (1886).