PGW(C)23(DEN)

Brynbella  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Denbighshire  

Tremeirchion  

307804  

372326  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Landscape park; informal garden.  

Late eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century.  

Registered for its historic interest as a small late eighteenth-century park and informal garden with later overlays, which provides the setting to Brynbella Hall and its associated estate buildings. Also important for its close historical association with Hester Lynch Piozzi. Brynbella Hall (Cadw LB: 1373; NPRN 35700) was built for Mr and Mrs Piozzi in 1792-5 and was designed by Clement Mead (1798-1839). Hester Lynch Piozzi (1741-1821) was born Hester Lynch Salusbury the heiress to the Bachygraig estate. Her first husband was the brewer and MP Henry Thrale (1724-1781) who she supported in political campaigning and managing their large brewery business, which she sold after his death. She was a famous author, a member of the Blue Stocking society for female intellectuals, and a close friend of Samuel Johnson about whom she wrote a best-selling biography. Her other publications included poetry, travel writing, history, linguistics and politics. She travelled widely in Europe following her second marriage to the Italian singer Gabriele Piozzi in 1784, before returning to Wales to live at Brynbella, named to reflect her love of Wales and Italy. The gardens around the house are located at the east end of the park. The two are separated by a ha-ha. The house is approached via two drives through woodland, one from the north and one from the south, each with an entrance lodge (Cadw LB: 1413 and 26453) the drives meeting at a sweep on the east side of the house. Around the house are areas of woodland providing buffers between the gardens and its boundary tracks and the B5429 road. Much of the garden landscaping is of twentieth-century date. The west front of the house is planted with a shrub border. A paved terrace leads down to a croquet lawn with shrub borders and a path to the rest of the garden. The main part of the garden lies to the north of the house and includes a walled kitchen garden around which are herbaceous borders, shrubberies, woodland and a small enclosed area of yew hedging behind which a yew walk with herbaceous border leads back to the house via the stable yard. The west side of the walled garden overlooks a lawn area with ornamental pond. The nineteenth-century kitchen garden at the north end of the garden is bounded by brick walls standing to their full height of about 5m. The garden is currently (2020) divided into quadrants: those on the east side are maintained for vegetables and fruit, that on the south-west is a tennis court while the north-west quadrant is a garden with formal, geometric layout. The area to the west of the house is not so much parkland, being small, but rather the adaption of fields to provide an improved setting for the house. It incorporates some old hedgerow trees and a dried-up stream bed. The park is separated from the garden by a ha-ha running the length of the west side of the garden. Mixed deciduous trees are scattered throughout the area, with a few specimen oaks in the eastern part. On either side of the view from the garden front of the house are clumps of mixed deciduous trees, and in the western end of the area is a similar clump around a dew pond. The distribution of trees is much the same now as it was in the later nineteenth century. Significant view and setting: the setting of Brynbella and the views from the house and gardens across the park and Vale of Clwyd make this an exceptionally attractive site. Sources: Cadw 1995: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Clwyd, 22-4 (ref: PGW(C)23). Ordnance Survey, six-inch map Flintshire VIII (first edition 1871). Additional notes: D.K. Leighton