PGW(Gd)19(GWY)

Wern  

II*  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Gwynedd  

Porthmadog  

254340  

339996  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Terraces, lawned garden with formal elements, informal water garden, woodland, parkland, kitchen garden and orchard.  

Late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  

Registered as a good example of a late nineteenth/early twentieth-century garden by the well-known garden designer Thomas Mawson (1861-1933) with fine terraces, formal pool, informal water garden and a circular garden with a well-preserved and attractive pavilion. The garden is particularly well documented. The registered area also includes the remains of an earlier tower/summerhouse and a small park. The registered park and garden has group value with Wern Manor and its associated estate outbuildings and structures. Wern Manor (LB: 4626) lies in a rural setting north-west of Porthmadog, just off the road to Criccieth and Pwllheli. It is surrounded by gardens set in parkland, on an estate originally founded in the sixteenth-century by Morris Johns. The park lies on flat ground to the east and on more uneven ground rising to the west. In the park to the east, viewed over a ha-ha, are two circular copses which were planted to enhance the outlook by breaking up the ridge of hills forming the distant view. These hills offer a pleasant aspect but have a long, almost level skyline, and the copses in the foreground add interest to this without obscuring too much of the view. To the west and south-west, north and west of the lodge (LB:4629) is a more undulating area with rocky outcrops which is traditional parkland with scattered trees, a fair proportion of those shown on the 1915 map surviving. To the north of it is a wooded hill (Coed Bryn-tŵr) with the remains of the look-out tower, probably a summer house. Beyond, to the north-west, is a similar area but with fewer trees. South of Coed Bryn-tŵr, is a small lake which acts as a reservoir, forming an important element of the foreground of the view from the tower, and probably dating to the late nineteenth-century phase of improvements. Two small ponds south-west of the house, shown in 1915, were filled from the overflow of the reservoir. A watercourse flowed northwards from the ponds past the kitchen gardens and farm. There are two drives, both still in use. The south drive is the main approach, with heavy wooden gates (LB: 21568) and a lodge (LB: 4629) at the entrance. The north drive is now a rough track. It is likely that any improvements to the grounds would have been made in the first half of the eighteenth-century, or after 1811. The park boundaries were the same in 1839 as after the building of the 1892 house, but only the western enclosure and the wooded hill with the tower are likely to be part of an eighteenth-century, or older, park. Much of the planting is nineteenth-century or later, but the woods around the tower are likely to have been planted in the eighteenth-century. The gardens lie to the south and east of the house, and form two distinct areas: an area of lawns and formal gardens to the east, and an area of wilderness on the south, the two separated by a stream. Close to the house are two terraces. The upper one, along the south side of the house, is wide and roughly gravelled on the south side, partly used as a carpark, with a small lawned area against the house, and running back to the north along the east side as it merges with the natural ground level. The lower terrace (LB: 21554) on the east is linked by a flight of steps to a long walk, flanked by yew hedges, eastwards terminating in a round garden with a stone pavilion, designed by Thomas Mawson (LB: 4628). In a hedged enclosure to the north is an ornamental lily pool (LB: 21569). Mawson laid out the formal garden in about 1901-03. The original terrace was probably about ten years older but Mawson added a second terrace to the earlier one designed by Douglas. The eastern boundary of the garden is a ha-ha which permits an unbroken view over the parkland towards distant hills. There are some fine specimen trees, pre-dating the early twentieth-century improvements, and a rockery, now swallowed up by a neighbouring shrubbery. To the south of the stream, which was also modified and planted as a garden feature, is an extensive wilderness area, with many mature specimen trees and other interesting planting. It was probably laid out to hide the railway embankment. It narrows and extends beyond the garden to the east, forming a belt of trees and shrubbery along the southern edge of the park. Opposite the top part of the long walk a bridge over the stream leads into an avenue of trees running up the slope within the wilderness. A tunnel under the railway gave access to the strip of land alongside the road cut off by the line, reached via an avenue of Irish yews, probably once a major path. Paths within the garden were once numerous, but few survive. In 1839 there was a large, square kitchen garden immediately to the north of the house. It contained no glass but had perimeter and cross paths dividing it into quadrants. When the house was rebuilt and extended in 1892 the whole of the south-east quadrant was taken up by the new wing, and part of the south-west quadrant by new outbuildings. The remaining area was then devoted to glasshouses and hothouses. The current use of this area is unknown but it appears to have been developed. The kitchen garden immediately to the north of the house was replaced, in around 1892 when the house was rebuilt, by a new kitchen garden to the north-west of the house. It lies on the west side of the north-south main track linking the drives. This garden is rectangular and somewhat larger, at about an acre, than its predecessor. Its walls, recently altered, are of stone up to 3m high on the south and west, 1m high on the east, and had doorways at either end of the south wall. Since registration the interior of the garden has been partly overlain with buildings. Significant View: To the east, viewed over a ha-ha, are two circular copses which were planted to enhance the outlook by breaking up the ridge of hills forming the distant view. Source: Cadw 1998: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales: Conwy, Gwynedd & the Isle of Anglesey, 308-14 (ref: PGW(Gd)19(GWY).