PGW(Gd)46(ANG)

Llanidan  

II*  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Isle of Anglesey  

Llanidan  

249598  

366903  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Landscape park, pleasure grounds, walled garden, churchyard with yews.  

1606-52; 1772-1802; 1802-82; c.1937; 1984 onwards.  

Llanidan Hall is situated in the south corner of Anglesey on the shore of the Menai Strait. It is registered for its early seventeenth-century features which include the walls of a walled garden and traces of a formal park. Llanidan has a small but well-preserved late eighteenth-century landscape park in an exceptional position on the Menai Strait, with well framed views to Snowdon. Its sophistication, with a sea shore bank and very fine ha-ha, suggests that a professional landscaper may have advised on the layout. The site is an ancient one which incorporates a circular churchyard with yew trees and a holy well. There is group value with Grade II* Listed Llanidan Hall and Grade II Listed stables (LBs 5540 & 19880), together with the adjacent Grade II* Listed Church of St Nidan and its churchyard (LBs 5538 & 19888). Additionally, the remains of the old parish church are a Scheduled Monument (AN051). The park had origins in the early seventeenth century, the present landscaping dating from the period 1783-1816. It is a fan-shaped area of old parkland lying to the south-east of the house and garden, sloping gently down to the edge of the Menai Strait. The park is in three enclosures, the north-eastern two formerly one. The small stream fed by St Nidan's well runs down the one constant internal division. A very fine Grade II Listed ha-ha on the boundary of the garden separates it from the park (LB 5542). A low artificial bank on the shoreline in front of the house hides the muddy foreshore from view. On the shore, in a plantation, is the boathouse. Several small, walled plantations of mixed deciduous trees survive around the edges of the park. Towards the sea there are two plantations on the sea edge flanking the central axis so that they frame the view of the Strait and Snowdonia from the house and garden. In 1900 the enclosures were well planted with individual trees but most of these have now gone. The layout of the early park was formal. Although much of it was swept away by the later landscaping, one of its main features, the central axis from the house down to the Strait, has always been maintained. The house is approached from the north from an entrance and lodge on the A4080, along a drive that is now a public road. The drive was separated from the park by a ha-ha, still intact with an avenue of mature chestnuts and limes along its edge. A second drive from Brynsiencyn approached from the west. The pleasure grounds run south-west to north-east between the south front of the house and the park, bounded on the south-west by the walled former kitchen garden and on the south-east by the ha-ha which curves around at the ends. In the early seventeenth century, garden enclosures were reputedly made to the south of the house. In the period 1783 and 1816 almost half of the southern end of the walled garden was removed, creating the present fan-shaped garden. This garden was informal, mostly lawn. In 1900 it was mainly lawn with specimen trees, paths and a shrubbery which, by the 1980s, had become completely overgrown. Subsequent restoration and redesign led to the thinning of the shrubbery, the restoration of a small pool with fountain and waterfall added, and creations which included a pergola, an oblong garden enclosed by a camellia hedge, and a magnolia avenue. A knot garden was made immediately west of the house. The likely oldest plants in the garden, a row of beeches along the outside of the south-east wall of the kitchen garden, now flank a grass walk planted with daffodils, known as the Daffodil Avenue. The walled garden, of early seventeenth-century origin, lies west of the house. It is an irregular triangle shape bounded by a stone wall about 3m high. The interior was redesigned in the 1980s to be both ornamental and practical. The earlier layout, framed by a network of paths, was obliterated after the Second World War, when the garden was ploughed. The northern part now has two rectangular formal areas. One is laid out with 32 small wood-edged herb beds, surrounded by a pergola with chain-linked wooden posts. The other, a 'physic garden' with two circular beds is surrounded by larger beds in geometrical shapes and with a similar pergola. To the south-west of the herb gardens is a formal vegetable area, the layout superimposed on the earlier path system. In the centre, a container holds water and a tiny fountain. Parallel with the west wall is a canal fed by spring water from the 'holy well' just beyond the garden wall. Further south is an informal orchard area which includes many old fruit trees. There is also a new orangery and a restored glass-roofed potting shed. Setting - Llanidan lies in its original rural setting along the shore of the Menai Strait. The eighteenth-century landscape park around the Hall is largely unchanged. Significant views - The combination of the garden boundary ha-ha and the bank on the shoreline afforded magnificent, seamless views from the house and garden across the park to the Strait and to Snowdonia beyond. Source: Cadw 1998: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales: Conwy, Gwynedd & the Isle of Anglesey, 18-22 (ref: PGW(Gd)46(ANG)). Additional notes: D.K.Leighton