PGW(Dy)68(PEM)

Warpool Court Hotel  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Pembrokeshire  

St. David's and the Cathedral Close  

175039  

224811  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Formal gardens; walled kitchen garden.  

1865-70; 1880-99; about 1900-1914.  

The registered garden at Warpool Court Hotel represents the survival of an unusual garden of the beginning of the twentieth century in a fine position overlooking the sea. Loosely Italianate in style, the garden is characterised by red and black brickwork decoration. It has important group value with and provides the setting for the substantial house (LB:12714). Warpool Court, a house dating from 1865-70 and now used as a hotel, is located a short distance to the south of St David’s, between St David's and St Non’s Bay. The ground drops gently from the house towards the coast to the south and west, giving panoramic views to the sea and offshore islands. The gardens were developed in two main stages. Initially, the walled kitchen garden (LB: 12716), to the east of the house, was built after 1880 when the grounds to the south were then informal, planted with specimen conifers. Then, following a change of ownership when Ada Lansdown Miller-Williams bought the property in 1899, the present garden south of the house was created, in 1902. It has been little changed since. The drive was rerouted to its present position at this time, to follow a south-west line from the north to the forecourt on the (north) front of the hotel. The drive is flanked by alternating clipped privet bushes and sycamore trees, backed by a tall privet hedge on the east. To the west of the drive is a grass field and to the east a lawn and hard tennis courts, with a row of sycamores along the south side of the area. The garden is bounded by a rubble stone wall. The west side of the hotel is lawn, with a belt of trees and shrubs next to the perimeter wall. To the south of the hotel a rectangular area has been laid out as the main garden: a terrace adjoining the house; and formal lawn below it. Red and black brick and red tiles are used throughout, the style and ornaments are loosely Italianate. The terrace is edged with a decorative arched parapet. Below it to the east is a small lawn flanked by mixed shrubs. From the terrace centre a flight of steps descends to the main lawn, sloping slightly southwards. It is bounded by a privet hedge on its south and west sides and by a small sycamore wood on the east. There is a modern, covered swimming pool in its north-east corner. Along the foot of the terrace wall is a flowerbed. At the west end is a suntrap, or ‘hemicycle’, a hemispherical area of stone paving backed by a high stone revetment wall on the west side with a low stone bench at centre (LB:12715). The central vista down the lawn is flanked by two Italian marble statues on tall plinths. Against the west boundary wall of the garden is an elaborate gothic doorway, and above the door a date plaque of 1902. Against the east boundary wall is a rubble stone tower, now disused, which originally served both as a pumphouse for sewage and as a folly tower. The north-east side of the garden is bounded by the wall of the kitchen garden with arched doorway access. The kitchen garden lies to the east of the house. It was built after 1880, but before the grounds to the south were developed in 1902 (LB:12716; NPRN:265320). The garden occupies a roughly square area, bounded on the west mostly by the house and former chapel and on the remaining sides by rubble stone walls between 2.5m and 3.5m high. There are decorative round-arched doorways in the west and north walls, and in the south wall a doorway at its east end into the main garden. At the east end of the north wall a squat, square, two-storey tower is built on to its outside. A single-storey lean-to range, former pigsties, runs north from the tower. The interior of the garden is now largely grassed over. An area of cobbling near the centre is probably all that remains of animal stalls or a gardener’s cottage, both of which are known to have existed in the garden at one time. The glasshouses and potting shed shown on the 1906 map have gone. The latter is known to have been decorated with painted tiles depicting fruit, flowers, vegetables and pheasants. In the north-east part of the garden are some old apple trees and a large old mulberry tree. Setting: Scenically very attractive position situated near the Pembrokeshire coast. Significant Views: Sweeping views from the house and garden to the sea and offshore islands. Sources: Cadw 2002: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire, 326-8 (ref: PGW(Dy)68(PEM)). Ordnance Survey second-edition 25-inch map: sheet Pembrokeshire XX.3 (1906).