PGW(Gt)31(MON)

Cefn Tilla  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Monmouthshire  

Raglan  

340680  

203266  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Landscape park, terraced and informal gardens, walled kitchen garden.  

Seventeenth century; 1856.  

Cefn Tilla is registered for its historic interest as a well-preserved mid-nineteenth century small landscape park and garden, with remnants of a formal seventeenth century garden. The site has historical associations with the architect Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt (1820-77) who re-modelled and extended Cefn Tilla house in 1856-60 for the 2nd Lord Raglan. The park and garden has group value with the listed house (LB: 24741), coach house and court yard (LB:24751) and forecourt walls at Cefn Tilla Court (LB:24750). The park at Cefn Tilla was created in 1856 when the house and some land were bought for the second Lord Raglan. It is a long narrow strip of land lying mainly to the north and south of Cefn Tilla Court; a landscape park in character, with grassland and isolated trees, the ground rolling on a westward-facing slope with Cefn Tilla situated in a hollow. The park is bounded on the east by the Gwernesney-Llandenny road. Until 1933 this was the main drive, now a public road, but it is still partly tree lined. The main entrance now is at the southern end of the park and the tree-lined drive runs along its western boundary up to the north side of the house. To the north a secondary drive crosses the park north-east/south-west from an entrance on the Gwernesney-Llandenny road. The garden lies to the south, east and north-east of Cefn Tilla Court and was created in two main phases; in the seventeenth century and soon after 1856. The rectangular area enclosed by dry-stone walling south of the house probably represents the extent of the original seventeenth-century garden. The rest of the garden layout - the terracing and topiary walk east of the house, the arboretum, the outer paths and forecourt - belongs to the mid nineteenth-century phase, as does much of the tree and some of the shrub planting. The informal arboretum to the north-east of the house retains some of its Victorian feel with more recent planting of trees and shrubs. Some of the largest trees date from the 1850s and a few Victorian rhododendrons remain, though only a relic of their former extent. A small ornamental pond in this area has been enlarged and deepened. There is evidence that the ground to the north of the house was originally sloping and that it was raised and levelled in the 1850s using a considerable depth of rubble and soil. About 100m south of the house is the walled kitchen garden of nineteenth century date. Square in shape, its brick walls surviving to full height with doorways in the centre of each wall, and lean-to bothies of brick and slate against the outside of the north wall. To the north is an outer garden, also of nineteenth century date, which used to contain hothouses as shown on the 25” Ordnance Survey map of 1882. Source: Cadw 1994: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Gwent, 22-3 (ref: PGW(Gt)31.