PGW(Gd)40(GWY)

Penrhyn Castle  

II*  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Gwynedd  

Llandygai  

260225  

371912  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Landscape park, woodland, terraced garden, walled kitchen gardens, lawns.  

Nineteenth century  

Registered as a well-preserved nineteenth-century landscape park and garden retaining much of its historic character. The walled kitchen garden is also in good condition. The setting and relationship of the house with the park and surrounding landscape is outstanding. The registered park and garden has group value with Penrhyn Castle and its associated estate buildings and structures. Penrhyn Castle (LB: 3659; NPRN: 16687) an early nineteenth-century neo-Norman castle by Thomas Hopper, is located on the Menai Strait, to the north of Llandegai. There was probably a park associated with the eighteenth-century house, and possibly with the preceding medieval one. It is not until 1804 (redrawn c.1820) that a map shows a layout which includes obvious designed parkland, and the large park which now surrounds the castle clearly has its origins in the later eighteenth century, around the time the Wyatt house was built. It would therefore have been laid out by Richard Pennant, 1st Baron Penrhyn. The enlargement and alterations to the layout were for the most part the work of George Hay Dawkins Pennant, builder of the present house. The castle lies centrally within its park. The park lies between the mouths of the Afon Cegin and the Afon Ogwen, on the west and east respectively, by the village of Llandegai on the south, and the sea on the north. The ground rises towards the centre of the park, levelling out into an exposed, flat-topped ridge with a couple of knolls. From the top of the keep and towers almost the whole of the park is visible, though the home farm, to the south-west, is screened by trees. The entire park is walled (LB: 23394) with several entrances and three imposing lodges contemporary with, and in similar style to, the castle: on the south the Grand Lodge on the main, arched, entrance at Llandegai (LB: 3661); another nearby at Talybont (on the original rear drive) (LB: 22925); and another on the north-west at Porth Penrhyn (LB: 3662; 23376). The retaining sea wall on the northern boundary has an artificial mole (a projecting causeway) which once had bathing huts and hot and cold baths (405439). The home farm (LB: 23444; 23447; 23448; 23449; 23450; 23452; 23454) was moved to the south-west from a site to the north, and there is farmed parkland around it. Areas of more ornamental parkland lie to either side of the Afon Ogwen to the north-east, east and south-east. A nineteenth-century print shows deer in the park though no area was designated as deer park. Woods have been planted along the sea-edge and alongside most of the drives as well as for screening and shelter purposes. The woodland, now commercially managed, is mainly concentrated around the edges of the park and alongside the main drive. Few parkland trees remain. Deciduous trees, including ash, lime and oak, are generally planted singly, though there are a few groups, and the remaining conifers (of which there are now few) are mostly in groups. Along the western edge of the park are the remains of an incline and tramway (scheduled monument CN415) which carried slate from quarries near Bethesda to the purpose-built Port Penrhyn (LB: 23439; 23364) at the north-west corner of the park. The well-preserved gardens lie around the castle. They consist mostly of informal lawns, planted with specimen trees and shrubs; there is an exceptional collection of woody plants. An estate map of 1768 shows formal gardens surrounding the old house, which must have been to some extent cleared when the present house, and its extensive stables, was built. Since the house and garden have passed to the National Trust there has been much new planting, and some new paths have been laid out for the convenience of visitors. There is more in the way of flowering shrubs, and a greater variety of trees, on the lawns and in the open areas than there was in the early nineteenth century, but the character of the garden is unchanged. The chief glory of the garden was, and still is, its setting against the landscape of north Wales, enhanced by the uncluttered layout. Wooded areas and shrubberies lie a short distance to the south of the castle and on a knoll to the north-west. The lawn west of the house has been an area for planting specimen conifers, some of which survive, including one planted by Queen Victoria in 1859. On the south-east side of the castle is The Barbican, a partly grassed terrace in front of the main entrance, with a stone parapet above a steep drop to the drive and park. From the terrace are extensive views across park, coast and hills. To the south of the house there is a south-facing slope, edges undefined, informally planted with tree heathers under mostly evergreen trees. There is now an extensive network of paths throughout the garden, some new, others following older routes. They include the Rhododendron Walk. A ruined chapel (LB: 3658) to the west of the castle serves as a picturesque late eighteenth-century garden feature, but was originally (from the fourteenth century) the family chapel. It was dismantled and moved from its original position and is now sited as a romantic ruin and eye-catcher. The walled flower garden (LB: 3660) lies about 230m to the west of the house on a fairly steep, south-west-facing slope, surrounded by woodland. It was laid out in the second half of the nineteenth century and replaced, on a favoured site, a smaller kitchen garden of the eighteenth century, relocated elsewhere. The overall plan is rectangular, long axis north-west by south-east. The enclosing brick walls probably belong to its predecessor. The north and east corners, where the back wall meets the sides, are rounded. Its formal, ornamental, layout is terraced on three levels, the terraces retained by stone walls. The bog garden, below the lower terrace, is a later enlargement, and possibly explains the removal of south-west boundary wall. There were also some twentieth-century alterations. A walled kitchen garden (LB: 23375) located about 400m north of the house is no longer used for the production of fruit and vegetables and now has a variety of other uses, mostly as gardens for the estate cottages adjacent to it (LB: 23372; 23373; 23374; 23472). The garden covers some six acres, is rectangular on plan with a southern extension which is now the garden of Penrhyn, formerly the gardener's house. The stone walls largely survive, rising to 5m high in places, the main entrance to the garden is through the west wall. The walls of the southern extension are stone, lined with brick on north and west sides. In 1889 the main garden was divided into six unequal areas, the north-west part separately enclosed and given over to glasshouses, now gone. Along the south side of the two northern sections, east of the glasshouse area, is an unusual 2m high fruit wall, which partly survives. Most of the extensive range of buildings along the outside of the west wall survive, though altered. A long range of brick potting sheds and stores along the south wall of the main garden also survive. These include the boiler house for the (former) glasshouses on the other side of the wall, in the southern extension. Significant Views: the ground rises towards the centre of the park affording exceptional views. Views from the main entrance of the house and the 'barbican' terrace on the east side, offer the best views, towards Penmaenmawr and the Carneddii - the view of the park, coast and hills is spectacular, and was described with enthusiasm in an article in the Gardeners' Chronicle of July 1887. From the top of the keep and towers almost the whole of the park is visible, although the area of the home farm, to the south-west, is screened by trees. Sources: Cadw 1998: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales: Conwy, Gwynedd & the Isle of Anglesey, 250-7 (ref: PGW(Gd)40(GWY)). Ordnance Survey second edition six-inch map: sheet Caernarfonshire VII.SW (1887); third edition 25-inch map: sheet Caernarfonshire VII.9 (1913). Additional notes: D.K.Leighton