PGW(Gd)54(CON)

Kinmel Park  

II*  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Denbighshire  

Bodelwyddan  

298092  

375016  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Medium sized landscape park; formal terraced garden; shrubberies; walled garden.  

Seventeenth century, 1791-1802, 1843, 1871-1874  

Registered as a medium sized landscape park with a formal garden probably by W.E. Nesfield dating to the late nineteenth century, shrubberies and a walled garden. The registered park and garden shares important group value with Kinmel Hall and its associated estate buildings together with parkland and garden structures. Kinmel Hall (LB: 229) the latest of several houses on the site, is prominently set, roughly central, in its landscape park. A much earlier house, of which the ruins remain, is situated in the walled garden to the east (LB: 18682), being a small three-storey seventeenth-century stone house, known as Old Kinmel (LB: 230). There was a park associated with Old Kinmel (the 'old' park to the east being associated with it) and there is a record that Sir Owen Wynne of Gwydir gave 'a herd of deer for Sir John's new park', Sir John being Sir John Carter . (d.1676) who acquired Kinmel by marrying an heiress of the estate, Elizabeth Holland. The park is a medium-sized landscape park sandwiched between the A55 to the north and the Roman road to Betws-yn-Rhos in the south. Its exact boundaries are not known but the rough area can be gauged by the lime and oak plantings to the west, east and south of Old Kinmel. The park rises to the south towards the mansion, the southern area of the park rising above the mansion itself. The plantings around the new mansion are mostly oak and beech with some Scots Pine and Plane, and are contemporary with the Wyatt building of 1791 and subsequent mansions. There are small areas of mixed woodland in the southern part of the park, and a large beech wood on the south-western boundary. Otherwise, the park is now given over to enclosed farmland. The boundaries of the park have been largely dictated by road construction and this too has influenced drive construction and the presence of lodges of which there are several. The gardens in Kinmel Park lie immediately around the house mostly to the south and west but also on the east. Because of the sloping terrain of the ground, the garden is terraced and provides an ideal viewing platform to the surrounding landscape. The present formal garden on the west, also known as the Venetian Garden, is of about 1875, contemporary with the present house, its designer is said to be W.A. Nesfield (1793-1881) the father of W.E. Nesfield (1835-1888) the architect of the house. The design of the Venetian Garden, with its topiary and use of clipped standard hollies, leant towards the ideal of an ‘old fashioned garden’. It focuses on a large circular stone fountain (LB: 18678). The plot is divided into four with formal beds surrounded by clipped yew at the eastern and western ends with two 'Roman' pillars (LB: 18679) at one time part encircled by clipped yew similar in shape to the Greek letter omega. This area is sunken and there is a circuit gravel path. Because of the sloping nature of the site this part of the garden forms a terrace. The whole area is surrounded by a brick wall (LB: 18680) with a garden house and steps (LB: 18677) to the southern level in the south-western corner. To the south, west and east of the house and stable complex (LB: 18681) is an area of shrubbery on a higher level, running the width of the Venetian Garden and the house, forming the southern part of the pleasure garden. It has a 3m wide gravel path, now grassed over, running its length with gates at each end leading on to the park. The area is made up of informal tree and shrub plantings divided by naturalistic paths. A walled garden (LB: 18682) is located to the east of the house and gardens. Built up around what are now the ruins of Old Kinmel in its western corner, it appears on an early OS map of 1856. Then there were still a number of other buildings in the vicinity of Old Kinmel. The walled garden had not yet been enclosed on this corner, which was probably incorporated into the walled garden when the drive was re-routed from the north of the walled garden to the south. The walls, of brick and stone and not of one build, are about 5m high. Some of the stone walling could be early seventeenth century and be associated with Old Kinmel, whilst the brick is probably of eighteenth and nineteenth century origin. The main entrance from the house was on the west side by a stone crow stepped arch. The gateway is still there but the arch has gone. The Garden House (LB: 18717) is situated in the extreme south-eastern corner of the garden. Significant Views: Approaching the house from the west on the main drive. Views out over the park from the house and gardens. Sources: Cadw 1995: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Clwyd, 142-145 (ref: PGW(C)5).