PGW(Gt)39(BLG)

Bedwellty Park  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Blaenau Gwent  

Tredegar  

314236  

208527  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Urban landscape public park.  

Early nineteenth century; 1910-32.  

Registered as a well-preserved example of an early nineteenth-century landscape park later given to the people of Tredegar to be used for public recreation. Rockwork and a well-preserved icehouse are contemporary with the landscape park. The park has historical associations with the ironmaster Samuel Homfray, who built the existing house, and his son also Samuel, who further developed the house and park. In the second half of the nineteenth-century the house passed to the Morgans of Tredegar Park, who reserved the house for the managers of the Tredegar Iron and Coal Company. In 1901 the Morgans gave the house and park to the people of Tredegar. The registered area has group value with the house and associated park features. The basic structure, most of the built features, and some tree planting from the early nineteenth-century park survives. Two curving drives were made to the north and south of Bedwellty House (LB: 1862). The area around and to the east of the house, between the two entrances, was planted with ornamental trees with an under-planting of shrubs, the west boundary was given a screening belt of deciduous trees. The southern end of the park is landscaped with specimen coniferous and deciduous trees, most of which were planted in the twentieth-century. The clumps of beeches in this area, however, date from the early nineteenth-century. To the west of the house the series of five ponds were made, four of them one above the other, linked by narrow rockwork channels, and surrounded by rockwork and with dense planting of coniferous and deciduous trees and rhododendrons on their south and east sides. Both the planting and ponds are shown on the 1839 tithe map. Water for the ponds and fountain was brought from two ponds on the ridge to the south-west of the park, via a drain from the lower pond. To the north-west of the house a small kitchen garden was made, with an unusual ice-house to its east (LB: 1878). This is a small, single-storey stone building, entered on the north side, and with a window in the south side, and a chimney and fireplace on the east wall. On the gable end of the roof is a small belfry. Inside is a single room, with an opening in the centre at the top of the egg-shaped, brick-lined ice chamber, which is built into the raised terrace. The icehouse is early nineteenth-century with the room above said to have been built as a private chapel in the later nineteenth-century and the bellcote added in 1876.   An unusual feature in the park is the lump of coal cut to form a monument at the 1851 Great Exhibition (LB: 1879). Owing to the difficulties of transportation, it was decided that it would not survive the journey to Crystal Palace, and it was set up in the grounds of Bedwellty House, the home of the Homfray family, who owned both the Tredegar Ironworks and the Yard Level. A block of two tons (2.03 tonnes) was cut from a level at Sirhowy 100 years later for the Festival of Britain in 1951, and this was subsequently also placed at Bedwellty Park.   To the west of the house is a garden area composed of a series of linked circular compartments surrounded by water-worn rockwork, with a rockwork fountain and arch at the southern end. At the north end is a small ruinous circular stone pavilion reached by a rockwork-lined path, which may originally have been a grotto. South of this area was a rectangular levelled area shown on the 1875 six-inch Ordnance Survey map as the 'croquet ground' and converted into tennis courts in 1910. In 1901 the Morgans gave the park to the people of Tredegar, and it was converted for use as a public park. Some changes were made to the structure: a new secondary entrance was made on the west side, with a straight drive to the house, and an elaborate system of winding paths was laid out in the southern half of the park. Various recreational features were added: (grass tennis courts and Long (originally Jubilee) Shelter 1910; hard tennis courts and swimming pool 1932). Further additions were the octagonal bandstand (LB: 22487) in 1912 to the south of the house, the circular garden to the east of the house, built in about 1901, the War Memorial erected c.1920 (LB: 22488) and the Second World War Memorial Gates (1951) at the north entrance to the park. The Upper (north) Lodge was rebuilt in 1911, and the park was surrounded by iron railings in 1925. Source: Cadw 1994: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales: Gwent, 13-14 (ref: PGW (Gt)39).