PGW(Gm)42(GLA)

Cwrt-yr-ala  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Vale of Glamorgan  

Michaelston-le-Pit and Leckwith  

314348  

172982  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Formal terraced garden; informal grounds; walled kitchen garden; small park  

Eighteenth century; 1939-40  

Cwrt-yr-ala is registered for its small park with includes fine landscaping of a string of ponds which appear as one sinuous piece of water. It also has a formal garden with terraces and a walled kitchen garden. The grounds provide the setting for the listed house (grade II, LB: 26489), and there is further group value with the nineteenth-century Gothick former dairy (grade II, LB: 26490) located in the valley floor. Cwrt-yr-ala is a neo-Georgian mansion, built in 1939-40 by Sir Percy Thomas for Sir Herbert Merrett, following demolition of an earlier house which was built in 1820 by Edward Haycock of Shrewsbury, enlarged 1850, and the home of the Rous and Brain families. The house is situated on level ground on the north side of a small secluded valley to the east of the village of Wenvoe. The 1877 Ordnance Survey map shows a substantial house in the same position as the present one, with a service court and outbuildings to the east corresponding with the present layout. Much of the layout of the gardens and grounds relates to this earlier house. There were originally two parks here: one to the north, separated from the house by several fields; and another to the south of the house and gardens. The northern park was well planted with clumps and lone trees but is now given over to farming, the lodge demolished and the drive from the north surviving as a track. The house is now approached from the east, off the Cwrt-yr-ala road. The southern park survives. It occupies the Wrinstone brook valley, which runs west-east below the gardens, and the slope to the south, where the ground rises to Park Wood on the brow of the hill. The parkland here was never extensively planted, consisting of a grass slope with a few deciduous trees. In the valley floor is a string of long narrow picturesque ponds fed by the Wrinstone brook. Seen from the west they give the impression of a continuous sheet of water. They are fringed by mature deciduous trees, and a grass walk runs along their north sides. There are eight ponds in all, the top four silted up and shrouded by woodland. They are separated by weirs, dams and fish ladders. The present-day gardens are the result of the 1939-40 overlay on an earlier layout. They lie to the south, east and west of the house, on ground sloping slightly to the south. The formal gardens to the south and west of the house consist of terraces of varying character. To the south is a wide, stone-flagged terrace with formal beds planted with low-growing shrubs. It is flanked on the south by a swimming pool and, alongside it, a narrow shrub bed. Below is a level, terraced lawn extending along the south side of the garden. A sundial is set at its centre and a flight of steps gives access to the ponds in the valley bottom. A further formal area to the west of the house is surrounded on the north side and north half of the west side by a high yew hedge. Against the house is a narrow terrace, a conservatory at the north end. Below is a rectangular sunken lawn with a central east-west canal. At the west end of the canal a flight of stone steps leads up to a lead fountain of a standing boy. The lawn is bordered by raised beds bounded above and below with stone walling. East of the house is the informal wooded area planted mainly with deciduous trees. This is roughly triangular, bordered by the main drive along its south side and on the east by the public road. In the middle of the wood are overgrown stone piers of the former main entrance. The former drive has disappeared but its route is marked by yews which once flanked it. At the east end of the wood is an underground ice-house. The third main area of the gardens is the mixed woodland to the west of the house. This is bounded on the north by the kitchen garden and former orchard and extends westwards up the valley occupying the steep slope above the valley floor. Doorways from the kitchen garden led to walks through the woods. The kitchen garden is probably (in its present form) of mid-nineteenth century date. It lies to the west of the house, west of the sunken lawn, on ground sloping gently to the east and south. It is rectangular and surrounded by stone and brick walls up to 3.5m high, lower on the south side. In the middle of the east side a wall about 4m high protrudes into the garden, the remains of a dividing wall. On its north side is a lean-to stone potting shed, and against its south side are the brick footings of lean-to glasshouses. There were also glasshouses against the north wall. The interior is mown grass, with a few relict fruit trees in the western half, three cold frames and some small vegetable beds. In the north-west corner are some sheds. A shallow scarp runs east-west down the middle, a relic of the former division. To the west is an orchard enclosure and gardener's house, now a private dwelling. Setting - Cwrt-yr-ala is located in a rural area just beyond the western outskirts of Cardiff, with Caerau housing developments to the north and Leckwith industrial expansion to the east. The northern park has been lost to agriculture though the southern park remains intact. Significant view - From the lawn below the house there are fine views down to the ponds and across the park beyond. Sources: Cadw 2000: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Glamorgan, 220-23 (ref: PGW(Gm)42(GLA)). Ordnance Survey First Edition six-inch map, sheet: Glamorgan XLVII (1878).