PGW(Gd)44(ANG)

Bodowen and Bodorgan  

II*  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Isle of Anglesey  

Bodorgan  

230883  

387688  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Formal terraced garden, deer park, walled kitchen gardens, informal lawn/shrubbery areas, woodland.  

1779-82; mid nineteenth century.  

The registered area represents the relict remains of the house, garden and two parks at Bodowen, the ancestral seat of the Owen family, one of the most important families on Anglesey in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. During the nineteenth century the Bodowen estate was gradually absorbed by the adjacent Bodorgan estate and the registered area therefore encompasses both Bodowen and Bodorgan. Bodorgan is the seat of the Meyrick family who played a significant role in the development of Anglesey in the eighteenth and nineteenth century.  It retains many of its original features, including well-preserved formal garden terraces, informal gardens, deer park, remains of the walled kitchen garden and estate woodland and shooting coverts. The site has important historical associations with the Owen and Meyrick families and the registered area has group value with the house, buildings and other structures of historic significance to the estates. Bodowen and Bodorgan are located in the south-west of Anglesey. Bodowen is an estate with medieval origins. The last Bodowen mansion was built in 1615, located to the south-east of the present Bodowen farmhouse. It was demolished in 1829 as its lands were gradually absorbed by the Bodorgan estate and the two became a single unit. In the process, various changes, including tree planting, were instigated in the surrounding parkland with the aim of blurring the boundary between the two estates. Bodowen had two parks, one large, one small; historically ‘Park’ and ‘Park bach’. A deer park is known to have existed at Bodowen in the seventeenth-century; both park enclosures were probably used for deer. By the later nineteenth-century the larger park appears to have been managed for rabbits (Bodowen Warren (1891) or ‘Cwningar Bodowen’). The north end of the larger lies on the ridge top about 1km to the west of the house and garden. It occupies a linear, roughly rectangular area of ground sloping south-westwards from here to the shore, which is indented with three sandy bays and rocky headlands. Elsewhere, the park is bounded on its north-west and south-east sides by stone walls, and on the east by a wall now gone. The south-east wall is low and ruinous. It begins, at its west end, at the top of the cliff on the south side of Porth Gro, also the start of the boundary wall of the smaller park which occupies the headland of Twyn-y-parc (the site of an Iron Age promontory fort, scheduled monument: AN049). Most of the park interiors are tussocky grass with some rocky outcrops on the higher ground. There were two drives approaching the house; the main one from the north, the other from the west. The relict garden of Bodowen lies to the west of the house site, on slightly rising ground above it, and is contemporary with the house, dating to the early seventeenth-century. It consists of a four-sided, walled enclosure with a raised terrace along its west side. Beyond, to the west, is the rocky ridge of Bonc-grogen. The west wall of the house formed the southern half of the east wall of the garden. The structure and much of the walling of the early seventeenth-century garden remain, with some fine, ornamented entrance gateways (15586). Walls are of variable height rising to a maximum of about 3.8m. Bodorgan Mansion (LB: 5502) is the Anglesey seat of the Meyrick family. It is located on rising ground north-west of the Malltraeth inlet and facing south-east overlooking it. The situation gives excellent views towards Snowdon. The house lies within parkland the history of which can be traced from the early eighteenth-century onwards, on an estate with medieval origins. The park occupies a roughly rectangular area of ground, long axis north-east by south-west, sloping south-eastwards down towards the Malltraeth estuary. It is bounded by minor roads, and by a stone field wall on the south-west. The house lies in the centre of the park, near the southern end of the central band of woodland which occupies a low ridge. There are fine views from the house and garden out over the park to the estuary and Snowdonia beyond. The park contains large areas of woodland in part for use as shelter belts for the exposed location, especially around the house which is surrounded by the central belt on three sides. Within the parkland is the deer park, a long, narrow area occupying the open strip between the central and eastern bands of woodland. The deer park is still used as such but is much reduced. Only the southern half of it, in front of the house, contains parkland trees, mainly oak and sycamore. The open areas of parkland other than the deer park are now farmland. Parkland planting once extended further north but by 1891 there were few trees outside the area where they are now concentrated. The woods contain a mixture of trees of all ages with some fine specimens, both deciduous and coniferous. The eastern woodland belt is now used as shooting coverts. The walled gardens, surrounded by woodland, are also located here. Nearby are Garden Cottage (the head gardener’s house- LB: 20403), a former bath house (dated 1825) and a twentieth-century boathouse. The ‘Lime Walk’ runs from a point almost opposite the bath house to the edge of the deer park, where there is a gate. Formerly the path continued across the park and through Rookery Wood towards the house, but this is now disused. There are three lodges. The main drive runs through woodland from the north at Lower Lodge (mid-nineteenth century - LB: 20406), continues along a public road due south to Front Lodge (late eighteenth-century lodge with early nineteenth-century gates LB: 20398; 20414), the oldest lodge, then gently curves towards the house. Before the house it intersects another drive from farm buildings, and crosses the deer park to the eastern band of woodland. The rear drive runs south-eastwards from the Back Lodge (mid nineteenth-century LB: 20399) to the farm area, and then south to approach the back of the house. The gardens in front of the house comprise three shallow, descending formal terraces with interconnecting steps, enclosed by stone balustrading with supporting walls, separating the terraces from the deer park on north and east and the lawn on the south (LB: 20413). The narrow upper terrace is gravelled and paved in front of French windows in the middle of the house. Central balustrading overlooks a small, formal rectangular pool on the next terrace below. The gravelled area in front of the pool is flanked either side by areas of grass. In the back wall is an elaborate carved shell with a dolphin’s head fountain in the centre. The lower terrace is two shallow steps down which run across the whole width of the terrace. Along the centre of the terrace is grass with gravelled walk all round the perimeter. The front balustrading curves outwards at either end of the walk and in the middle, a curved stone bench in each bay. The deer park is a little over a metre below. The terraces date from the mid-nineteenth century, the work of Owen Fuller Meyrick. To the south is an enclosed rectangular garden with the same balustrading around it. It is laid out as slightly sunken grass surrounded by sloping shrub and herbaceous borders. On the west side are two similar, nineteenth-century, classical-style open-fronted loggias used as a summer house and (formerly) an aviary. To the north of the house is a lawn with specimen trees and woodland. The eighteenth-century dovecote (LB: 5503) and various listed farm buildings are situated beyond. A large area west of the kitchen garden is known as the American Garden. Formerly part of the park, by 1891 it had taken on its present layout. It is grass, planted with a wide variety of specimen trees, including monkey puzzle, Indian bean, sweet chestnut, pines and other conifers, and groups of mature hybrid rhododendrons. To the south is a small circular pool with dressed stone edging, sloping cobbled sides and a simple spray fountain rising from a central rock pile; three square stone bases around it may have held figures or further waterworks. The American Garden was developed in the mid-nineteenth century and many of the trees in the gardens and grounds date to this period. There has been little alteration to the garden since then. The kitchen gardens were laid out between 1818 and 1840-41 and are extensive, a complex of enclosures comprising a large, main, garden with a later, smaller, extension on the north and a second extension on the north-east of that. All have brick walls. The main garden is a sub-square area of around two acres. The south and east corners are rounded, and the north corner forms an S-curve. Its walls rise to 4m high, with flat brick buttresses on the outside west wall. The interior layout appears unchanged. There is a sub-dividing brick wall across the south, rounded, end, with wide archways through it at either end. The larger portion is subdivided by cross paths into four quadrants. The extension on the north is rectangular with curved east and west walls and entrances with wooden doors giving access to it from the main garden. The gardens were notable for their glasshouses. The bases and some superstructure of a wide range of glasshouses and frames, some modern but others much older, survive. Against the dividing wall across the south-east of the garden is a very long, narrow glasshouse, quite modern, replacing its predecessor which was used as a peach house. Most of the glass was in the newer, northern, extensions, including probably the glass walls which are mentioned in gardening articles from 1854 onwards. The oldest glasshouse is the vine house in the centre of the original north wall, still containing vines, and to its rear a row of sheds with a fruit store and a gardeners' room. The tall chimney of the subterranean boiler-house is visible in the first extension area. By 1891 the amount of glass had increased enormously, from one house in 1840-41 to six or seven, plus frames, at the later date. By 1922 there was a gardener's house, and the total area of kitchen gardens was more than three and a half acres. The gardener’s cottage (mid nineteenth-century LB: 20403) lies to the south-east of the gardens. Significant Views: There are fine views from the house and garden out over the park to the estuary and Snowdonia beyond. Sources: Cadw 1998: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales: Conwy, Gwynedd & the Isle of Anglesey, 2-8 (ref: PGW(Gd)44(ANG)). Cadw 2013: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales: Conwy, Gwynedd & the Isle of Anglesey, (ref: PGW(Gd)65(ANG)). Ordnance Survey first-edition 25-inch map: sheet Anglesey XXI.8 & 12 (1886).