PGW(Po)5(POW)

Old Gwernyfed & Gwernyfed Park  

II*  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Powys  

Gwernyfed  

317641  

237228  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Elizabethan/Jacobean manor house with formal garden enclosures with later additions on the south-east edge of a large former deer park; three fishponds to south-west of house and relict orchards to north and south. Victorian House with formal terrace gardens; walled kitchen garden; parkland including deer park.  

c. 1450 on. c. 1870-80.  

The registered park and garden at Old Gwernyfed and Gwernyfed Park is situated on flat to gently sloping ground in the Middle Wye Valley approximately 3.5km to the north-east of Talgarth. Old Gwernyfed is registered for the unusually extensive earthwork and architectural remains of an early seventeenth-century formal, terraced garden laid out to the north-west of the house, walled enclosures to the south and south-east, and three fishponds to the south-west. The garden earthworks are also a scheduled monument (BR193). The gardens are associated with Old Gwernyfed house, a manor house with medieval origins, extensively rebuilt in the early seventeenth century (LB: 6654). The Old Gwernyfed garden is situated on the south-east edge of a large former deer park, and later landscape park to Gwernyfed Park. The park extends westwards from the house and gardens of Old Gwernyfed. The later house by W.E Nesfield, Gwernyfed Park (LB: 7464) was built in 1877-80 within the deer park of Old Gwernyfed and the history of the two houses is inextricably linked. The first edition Ordnance Survey map (1888) shows the layout of the Nesfield house and gardens situated within its park. The house was approached from an entrance off the road to the west and a lodge, also by Nesfield, was built in 1879. Gwernyfed Park is registered for the survival of formal terraced gardens (also by W.E Nesfield) and integral kitchen garden with grand ornamental gateways and an intact glasshouse, together with the remains of the parkland. The park surrounds the house and covers approximately 300 acres. Park planting survives in the shelter belts and woodlands and the many, isolated trees, some possibly remnants of former avenues. Although the park of the later house was subsequently augmented with planting in the mid to late nineteenth century the park already contained some ornamental elements the most important of which were three avenues which radiated out from a wood to the north-west of Old Gwernyfed. From the arrangement of the formal garden and formal gates (LB:6645) it appears that a main north-west drive ran from Old Gwernyfed out through the gateway in the west boundary wall into a woodland, which by 1888 was known as 'Garden Wood', across the southern part of Gwernyfed Park, through one of the avenues to Three Cocks and the Brecon/Hay-on-Wye road. The line of this drive is now lost. By the time of the OS 2nd edition (1905), Garden Wood had been developed, becoming an ornamental pleasure ground with serpentine walks in addition to the cross-rides and a maze near the brook. Long stretches of stone park boundary wall and nineteenth-century iron park fencing and gates survive. Caeronen Farm was originally the deer park Keeper’s Lodge and by the nineteenth century had a walled orchard/garden. The main gardens lie to the south and west of Gwernyfed Park house. The garden layout is acknowledged to be that of W.E Nesfield and it would seem that it reflected the Italianate and labour intensive style of the later Victorian period, although it may well have incorporated or remodelled existing features such as the ha-ha and some existing trees. An intricate parterre surrounded a fountain to the south of the house, the layout of this survives. This was linked to a shrubbery to the west by the wide, tree lined, gravelled Walk, which concluded at the highly ornamental walled kitchen garden. This area has been developed with school buildings. About 150m south-west of the house is a large, integral walled kitchen garden (LB: 7520) with an additional orchard immediately to the south-east, abutting the east wall. It is believed that both of these enclosures were designed by Nesfield. Against the north wall is a range of glasshouses by Messenger & Co, of Loughborough, erected c.1880-90 (LB: 17049). A gardener’s cottage is situated in the southwest corner of the walled garden (LB: 17050). Significant Views: Views to the north and south from Gwernyfed House across the park and surrounding countryside. Extensive views west from the formal gardens at Old Gwernyfed. Sources: Cadw 1999: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Powys, (ref: PGW (Po)5(POW)). Ordnance Survey six-inch map sheet: Brecknockshire XXIII.NW (1888; 1905)