PGW(Gm)4(GLA)

Dunraven Park  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Vale of Glamorgan  

St Brides Major  

289041  

172942  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Deer park; pleasure grounds; walled garden  

Seventeenth/eighteenth century; early nineteenth century  

Dunraven Park is registered for the remains of its deer park and pleasure grounds, and the well-preserved walled garden, associated with Dunraven Castle. Dunraven Castle was a large castellated gothic mansion built for Thomas Wyndham, M.P in 1802-06. It was demolished in 1962. The historic park and garden has important group value with the associated estate buildings and structures most of which are listed. The site of Dunraven Castle lies on an exposed and elevated position on the northern flank of the Trwyn y Witch headland on the Bristol Channel, to the south of St Brides Major. The early nineteenth-century mansion appears to follow the design of Clearwell Castle, by Roger Morris (1728) another Wyndham property. This house is depicted in Neale's Views of Seats, (c. 1830) as a compact crenellated mansion with projecting front wings on the south-east side lower than the main block. In 1858 Caroline Lady Dunraven removed the central tower and replaced it with a conservatory. Subsequent alterations in 1886-88, designed by George Devey of Kent, involved the addition of a further wing and tower, and at some stage the side wings were raised to four storeys. Today, there is little left of the house. The oval forecourt on the south-east side is just discernible and stone footings, flights of steps, and the revetment wall of the platform on which the house was built remain. To the north of the forecourt a former drive passes through an arched entrance gateway (LB: 21797). The park, probably of seventeenth-century date, lies to the north, east, and south-east of the house, on the rolling plateau above sea cliffs. It occupies a roughly rectangular area, wider at the north end, stretching from the Pant y Slade valley in the north to the edge of the Cwm Mawr valley in the south. The park is surrounded by a castellated rubble-built stone wall, now partly demolished, which ran up to the cliff edges. It is probably of early nineteenth-century date, replacing an earlier wall, and together with the lodges, entrances and drives is contemporary with Thomas Wyndham's new house. There are three former entrance drives. A single-storey gothic style lodge, Seamouth Lodge (LB: 21790; NPRN: 308223) stands at the north-west entrance. Nearby, outside the park, is Seamouth Cottage (LB: 21789) a rustic stone house with a thatched roof, possibly rendered picturesque as part of the early nineteenth-century landscaping. This drive with stunted horse chestnuts and sycamores on either side near the house, snakes around the walled garden and also provides visitor access to the headland. The second drive approached from the east along the Pant Llawn-dwr valley and enters the park at Grand Lodge (LB: 21785). A further drive entered the park from the south-east, at Cwm Mawr lodge, now ruined. The park appears to have received very little ornamental landscaping because of its exposed location. Most of the planting shown in open areas on nineteenth-century maps has gone and the park is now mostly open grassland. Two groups of pillow mounds are located on the castle headland (NPRN: 24502 & 24503) and may be related to the development of the planned landscape. The pleasure grounds were situated on the north-facing slope to the north-west of the house, and to its south and south-east, on ground sloping down from the house towards the sea cliffs. They were probably laid out during the rebuilding of the house in the first decade of the nineteenth century, by Thomas Wyndham. In 1877 the whole area was bounded by a wall or fence, long gone, and was well wooded. Only the area to the south-east of the house remains wooded, much of it with seedling sycamores, though once densely planted with trees. In about 1840 Lord Dunraven laid out walks along the south cliff of the headland leading down to the Witch's Point, and these remain as narrow winding paths. But little remains of the grounds layout shown in 1877 which included informal walks, steps, and several built features, including a fountain south of the walled garden, a conservatory to its south-east, and the flagstaff on the headland top. A ruined stone garden folly built into the middle of the south-west wall of the walled garden may belong to this period (LB: 21788). An old photograph of the north-west front of the house shows that the garden immediately around the house was largely lawn, bounded by a stone revetment wall, with a small pavilion in the west corner. Today this area is all grass; some of the revetment wall remains, but the pavilion has gone. The walled garden (LB: 21787) lies in the valley bottom to the north-east of the house site. There have been enclosures here since at least the sixteenth century when a walled 'paddock' was built in 1543. An engraving of 1776 after a drawing by Francis Grose of 1775 shows the walled garden with un-crenellated walls. It has since undergone several phases of development, in particular after 1877, reflected in variations in wall construction, and has now been partly restored. It is a large rectangular area, orientated south-east/north-west, largely enclosed by a high partly crenelated stone wall, 3.5m-5m high. The garden is divided laterally into three compartments, and its use was both utilitarian and ornamental. The walls of the northern section are partly buttressed, with gothic doorways near the east and west ends of the north wall. The eastern end of the north wall has an outer skin which is all that remains of the stable block. In front of the north-east wall are the brick footings of the glasshouse, probably a vinery, and a row of five brick cold frames. Inside the footings are a brick path, pipework and a water tank. The interior is otherwise laid out with axial paths, lawns, grass, and the remains of built structures. The axial path down the centre of the garden, on which a pool (on the south-east) is aligned, remains as in 1877. The middle compartment is bounded on the north by a stepped yellow-brick partition wall up to 3.5m high. The interior is largely grassed over, with paths across it, one to a doorway in the next cross-wall. The third compartment is ornamentally laid out with raised revetted, grassy, terraces at the north-east and south-west ends, and a large lawn in the middle, possibly a lawn tennis court. A small raised pavilion lies against the outer wall on the south-western terrace. In the northeast corner of the walled garden is a round tower built into the walls. It is of rubble stone construction with a crenellated and slightly corbelled out top. Its upper floor was for viewing and banqueting with a brick-lined ice-house in the basement (LB: 21786; NPRN: 23073). Access to the upper floor is via stone steps on the outside to a trefoil-headed doorway on the south-east side. On the north side outside steps lead down to the well preserved ice-house below. Setting: Located in an exposed and elevated position on the northern flank of the Trwyn y Witch headland on the Bristol Channel, to the south of St Brides Major. A large Iron Age hillfort (Scheduled Monument GM350) occupies the headland. Significant views: Views from the house site towards Dunraven Bay. Views along the coast and across the Bristol Channel from the registered park and the headland. Source: Cadw 2000: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Glamorgan, 224-7 (ref: PGW(Gm)4(GLA)). Ordnance Survey First-Edition six-inch map, sheet: Glamorgan XLIV (1877). Ordnance Survey 25-inch map: sheet Glamorgan XLIV.7 (1899)