PGW(Gt)61(MON)

Chepstow Park  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Monmouthshire  

Devauden  

349156  

197696  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Medieval deer park; seventeenth-century deer park and deer course, with lodge.  

About 1270s; about 1630  

Registered as an unusually well-preserved and well-delineated deer park that belonged to Chepstow Castle. The park has two distinct phases of development. In the medieval period it was a simple deer park bounded by a wooden fence. In the 1630s it was walled and probably used for deer coursing; the one mile track probably ran from the entrance at Pen-y-Parc to the now ruined lodge. The deer park has group value with scheduled monument Chepstow Park Wood Moated Site (MM103) which comprises the remains of a moated hunting lodge situated in a central position in the park. The deer park is situated to the northwest of Chepstow Castle to the west of the Wye valley. The park is bounded on the north side by the Devauden to Chepstow road and on the west side by the Devauden to Itton road. The park is bounded by a more or less continuous drystone rubble wall and the boundary can be traced in its entirety. There are six possible principal medieval entrance points and several further minor ones that may be medieval in origin. The park is largely taken up with commercially managed coniferous plantations but amongst these are pockets of deciduous native woodland. Within the park are a number of built structures. The most significant is the deer park lodge (MM103) situated on high ground in the centre of the park, from which there would have been extensive views south towards Chepstow. The site consists of a circular earthwork, about 50m in diameter, within which are a ruined building and vaulted spring. There are two spring-fed ponds on the higher ground in the middle of the park. A short distance to their south-west is a small reservoir, probably dating to the nineteenth-century. To the southwest of Pen-y-Parc, close to the park boundary, is a substantial raised platform. It is roughly rectangular and faces eastwards, out from the park. The east side is about 4.5m wide and 1.4m high and is faced with a rubble stone wall with splayed ends. The park was established under Roger Bigod (1245-1306). The first references to the park are in accounts of 1283, which refer to the wages of two parkers. It is therefore likely that the park was established shortly beforehand, probably in the 1270s. From the records, which continue until 1303/04, we know that the park was bounded by a tall fence of wooden palings that required frequent repair. There are references to an entrance gate that was fitted in 1288/89 and given a new lock in 1299/1300. No mention is made in the medieval accounts of a park lodge. The second major phase of development came in the 1630s when the fifth earl of Worcester of Raglan Castle, who owned the land at that time, enclosed the park with a drystone wall. The wall followed the medieval boundary. A keeper of the park was included in a list of the earl’s officers, implying the management of deer. The reason for the park’s re-enclosure and stocking by the earl of Worcester may have been to set up a deer course with the lodge in use as a deer coursing grandstand. Source: Cadw 2007: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest, additional and revised entries part 1, 39-41 (ref: PGW(Gt)61(MON).