PGW(Gd)42(ANG)

Plas Berw  

II*  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Isle of Anglesey  

Llanfihangel Ysgeifiog  

246683  

371792  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Deer park; other park areas; small courtyard garden; other garden areas around house.  

Seventeenth century; early nineteenth century.  

The registered area at Plas Berw represents a well-preserved example of an early seventeenth-century complex of house and courtyard garden, which adjoins the ruins of an older house. Other features may also be contemporary or nearly so. The house and gardens are situated within a deer park, which may date to the fifteenth century, and has some of its original wall still standing. The registered area has group value with the early seventeenth-century gentry house at Plas Berw (LB: 5500) and the remains of the late medieval former Plas Berw (LB: 5501; scheduled monument AN057). Plas Berw is situated on a north-west facing slope near Pentre Berw, facing into the slope, with its courtyard garden in front, and the expanse of Malltraeth Marsh at its back. The park occupies part of the ridge along the south-east side of Malltraeth Marsh and part of the almost flat ground at its foot which is just above the level of the marsh. The views, such as they are, are across the marsh to the north-west. The site is an ancient one; not only are there extant remains of a fifteenth-century house, but mentions of the name go back to the time of the Welsh princes in the early medieval period. Road and railway engineering has caused much damage to the park. It is bisected by the railway line, built c.1841, which passes to the south and south-west of the house, on an embankment which crosses the drive on a bridge and continues northwards through the middle of the rest of the park. The deer park wall forms the boundary on the south and south-west, and the modern road wall which replaces it is the boundary on the south-east; this wall, with a fence, continues along the south-east side of the 'Park Newydd' area. The rest of the boundaries are modern fences. The park wall, partly collapsed, stands to 1.5 m - 2m high in places. It is of dry-stone construction and tapers from base to top. It is probably contemporary at least with the 1615 house, possibly with the fifteenth-century one. A stream runs across the south-west end of the park, tumbling down the steep slope of the ridge in a series of rapids or small waterfalls. The stream bed shows signs of having been altered to create one larger waterfall at the steepest point, and there are small pools and waterfalls both above and below this which may also be artificial. This may have been part of early nineteenth-century attempts at ‘upgrading’ the park which also included a folly and a 'hermit's cell'. The remains of an avenue of beech trees along the drive, windswept but still imposing, may also date from this time. The area is now overgrown but the only ornamental planting in the park (recent) is here. The orchard and kitchen garden lay to the north-east of the house, and around them was woodland, of which small remnants survive, with, beyond, a rabbit warren, wood and further areas of park, one now containing a recent pond. There is no known record of when these park areas were added; that they post-date the deer park is clear from a reference to 'Park Newydd' in 1754. The woodland enclosures around the garden are called, on an eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century estate map, 'Gwinllan coed', a reference to a possible former vineyard. The garden area at Plas Berw at present is very small, and although the utilitarian area was once a good size, the ornamental garden was probably never extensive. The remains comprise the courtyard garden, another partly walled garden to the south-west of the house, and the area of the derelict fifteenth-century house now used as garden space. The most important remaining part of the garden is the small, seventeenth-century walled courtyard garden in front of the main house, contemporary with the house built in 1615. It is well preserved and has been recently excavated, confirming the date, and suggesting that it was created over a paved courtyard on the north side of the fifteenth-century hall-house, now ruined, with garden soil being imported for the purpose. All the current planting is modern, as might be expected, but most of the structure is original. The house forms the north-west side of the garden, with a step up to the door; the south-west side is the wall of the ruined hall-house, which also had a door opening on to the garden; the north-east wall is a purpose-built garden wall, with a gateway through it which is the main access to the house. The south-east wall has been demolished, probably when the railway embankment was built. Excavations, necessitated by modern attempts to drain the area effectively, revealed previous attempts to solve drainage problems in this garden, due no doubt to its position at the foot of a fairly steep slope. The surface had therefore been much disturbed. The stone-free soil interpreted as imported garden soil was concentrated along the wall of the hall-house, suggesting a layout similar to today's, with borders round the edges and an open space in the middle. The surface of this open space, apparently not paving, may have been gravel, grass, or another type of hard surface, although no direct evidence was found. [The garden is depicted on the Second Edition Ordnance Survey 25-inch map of Anglesey XVIII, sheet 11 (1900). Its main elements on that map include a well, sundial and orchard.] Sources: Cadw 1998: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales: Conwy, Gwynedd & the Isle of Anglesey, 24-7 (ref: PGW(Gd)42(ANG).