PGW(Gd)39(GWY)

Glynllifon  

I  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Gwynedd  

Llandwrog  

245960  

354997  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Landscape park with woodland and ornamental buildings, pleasure grounds with water features and other decorative elements, walled kitchen gardens.  

Eighteenth century; nineteenth century.  

Registered grade I as an outstanding and extensive eighteenth and nineteenth-century park and pleasure ground. The park has a complete enclosing wall and contains landscaping, planting and many decorative features, including a vista with fountains focused on a cascade, grottoes and intricate water features. Buildings in the park include a hermitage, fort and mausoleum. The nineteenth-century layout is largely preserved, with some elements of the earlier design surviving. The site is well documented. The registered park and garden has group value with the grade I listed house, built in 1836-48 to the designs of Edward Haycock, together with the numerous associated estate outbuildings, parkland features and garden structures at Glynllifon. Glynllifon mansion (LB: 3684; NPRN: 26526) is located to the south of Caernarfon on the west coast of Gwynedd, 1km from the sea. It is surrounded by vast parkland established in the eighteenth century and enlarged in the nineteenth, the house situated in the north-west part. The Afon Llifon flows through the park. Records show that despite its size the park itself was extensively used for recreation. The park is roughly square in shape, the south-west corner elongated, and is surrounded by a continuous high stone wall about 10km long (LB: 5924). There are several drives, many still in use though only the main west drive gives access to the house. There are lodges at five entrances: to the north (East Lodge LB: 22445), north-west (New Lodge LB: 22446), west (Grand Lodge LB: 20478; NPRN: 31379), south-west (Cae Maenllwyd Lodge NPRN: 406382) and east (Upper Lodge). All entrances have arches in the wall, monumental on the west. The park includes large areas of woodland and farmland, which are interspersed with each other to give several discrete areas of each. There is a broad swathe of woodland along the eastern edge of the park, farmland within it running up to the Llifon valley and the woods south of the house; in 1824 and 1828 part of this farmland, just north of Fort Williamsburg was a deer park. North of the house, close to the farm buildings, is another block of farmland, with woods beyond it along the western edge. South of the house the pattern is more fragmented, with smaller areas of farmland and pieces of woodland, possibly originally shooting coverts, including narrow strips along most of the southern part of the western edge. The farmland was once mostly parkland but is losing its character as park trees die and are not replaced. Much of the woodland has now been planted over with commercial conifers and most of the original timber has been felled, though there are some survivors. There are ponds and reservoirs dotted about the park (NPRN: 308973-4), some for agricultural use others to feed the water features in the pleasure grounds. Other notable features include the eighteenth-century Fort Williamsburg (LB: 3791; 20465 - 20470 – built by Sir Thomas John Wynn in 1761), a mausoleum (LB: 20464: NPRN: 23010), ‘pleasing’ bridges crossed by drives before the house (LB: 3790; 20442; 20462; 20445; 20438; NPRN: 23774), and the earthworks of long vanished tree-clumps (401184). The park was supplied from the large walled nursery to the south, later a pleasure garden (LB: 22444; NPRN: 400537). A cromlech, Maen Llwyd (LB: 20497; NPRN: 303384), was erected beside the drive in the far south-western corner. The existing pleasure grounds were laid out by the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Lords Newborough in the second half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth. Most of the surviving features can be fairly securely ascribed to either the 2nd or 3rd, in the nineteenth century, but the 1st Lord Newborough altered the previous layout of the park and is therefore also likely to have been responsible for initiating the redesigning of the pleasure grounds. The pleasure grounds consist of lawns near the house, crossed by the river which has been canalised; a vista to the east with a lime avenue and fountains (LB: 20439; 20476; 20474); a terrace behind the house with paths connecting with the path system in the Llifon valley, itself a major part of the pleasure grounds; and plantations still containing several paths to the north, south and west. There are also small garden areas near the stable block (LB: 20447) and Children's Mill (LB: 20440). Ornamentation has been concentrated on the river valley, north-east of the house, almost the whole of it to the point where the river enters the park near the East Lodge, over 1km from the Children's Mill, containing various grottoes and caves, a hermitage, pets’ cemetery, and numerous water features, most of which are listed structures. Three adjacent walled gardens to the immediate west of the house. Two, to the west, are nearly square, and date from the early nineteenth century; and a longer, narrower one to the east probably built in 1751. An unusual feature is the tunnel connecting the gardens, designed to allow the family and their guests to inspect them with minimum effort. Their layout has been altered to suit their present use. Significant Views: The broad vista to the east of the house towards the fountain flanked by an avenue of limes. From the park there are views towards Yr Eifl to the south and Snowdonia to the east, especially from significant points such as Fort Williamsburg, has some of the best views in the park. Ingenious use has been made of the hillfort of Dinas Dinlle, a significant feature on the coastline about 2km from the park wall, as an eye-catcher when looking out through the main entrance, under the triumphal arch. Source: Cadw 1998: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales: Conwy, Gwynedd & the Isle of Anglesey, 206-16 (ref: PGW(Gd)39(GWY).