PGW(C)24(FLT)

Plas Teg  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Flintshire  

Hope  

328670  

359602  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Courtyard entrance; walled garden; shrubberies; avenue.  

Seventeenth century; nineteenth century.  

Registered for the survival of a seventeenth-century courtyard, with gazebo, to one of Wales finest Jacobean houses. The grounds include a walled garden and a replanted lime avenue. The registered area has group value with the grade I listed house, grade II* listed gazebo and grade II listed ice-house. Plas Teg was built by Sir John Trevor (1562-1629), the second son of Sir John Trevor of Trevalyn Hall, in 1610. It is doubtful if there was ever a scheme for a park here as family attendance at Plas Teg was fairly sporadic right from the beginning. Long periods were spent at court in London, and Glynde in Sussex became the chief family seat, leaving Plas Teg tenanted or empty for much of its life. Nineteenth-century drives remain to the north and south of the house, but the lodge, formerly at the north entrance, was demolished when the A541 was widened. To the north-west of the house is a wooded area which has a small ha-ha around it. Some specimen oaks and limes are scattered throughout the area to the south-west, north-west, and south-east of the house. There are also some mature sycamores. Aligned on the north-east front of the house are the remains of a lime avenue stretching to the A541 Mold-Wrexham road. This is shown on a late eighteenth-century estate map, but the present trees are younger, indicating that the avenue has been replanted. There are two ice-houses at Plas Teg. The first lies to the north-west of the house just north of the site of a pond, now covered by a farm building. It is stone built with a stone vaulted interior. The second (LB: 47) lies just off a line to the centre of the house on the far side of the road. Very little survives of any garden at Plas Teg. An eighteenth-century drawing shows that there was an entrance courtyard on the north-east front of the building with two pavilions/gazebos, one at each outer corner, with a pillared gateway in the centre. The two side walls of the court are shown joined by a wall capped with fretted stonework, in the centre of which, aligned with the front door is a gateway entrance with arch over. The drawing also shows walled enclosures on each side of the gazebos, and to the front. The gazebos, built c.1610, formed an important part of the formal garden layout at Plas Teg. One of the forecourt gazebos survives (LB: 19762) and the other was rebuilt in 1996. The ground behind the house is steeply sloping, and directly behind the house is a stone retaining wall. Immediately to the south of the retaining wall and to the south-east are the remains of a nineteenth-century shrubbery. This area is bound to the north-west and south-east by stone revetted ha-ha. The 1st edition Ordnance Survey map (25") indicates meandering paths and a small pond. A small oval glasshouse, possibly a conservatory, is also shown to the south-east of the house but this does not survive. The small stone built walled garden lies to the south-west of the house on sloping ground above it. The garden is almost certainly nineteenth-century, not being indicated on a late eighteenth-century map of the house and surrounding land. The southern end of the garden has a wide and deep stone revetted ditch instead of a wall. A glasshouse once stood on the northwest wall as shown on the 1st edition Ordnance Survey map. Significant Views: Along the avenue aligned with the house front. Views towards the house as a prominent feature in the landscape when approaching from the south. Sources: Cadw 1995: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Clwyd, 212-14 (ref: PGW(C) 24). Ordnance Survey second-edition 25-inch map: sheet Flintshire XVII.2 (1899).