PGW(C)29(FLT)

Fferm  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Flintshire  

Leeswood and Pontblyddyn  

327892  

360302  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Formal garden  

Seventeenth century  

Registered for its historic interest as a good example of a nearly complete complex of walled gardens and for group value with Fferm farmhouse, a late sixteenth or early seventeenth-century stone manor house. Fferm lies just off the A541 Mold/Wrexham road at Pontblyddyn and is approached down a part cobbled farm lane. Two conjoined walled gardens are situated on the south and west sides of the house, both appearing in eighteenth-century surveys (c.1721-42 and 1766) with few differences from the present layout. The walls contain no dateable features but are thought to be contemporary with the house. The smaller compartment, behind the house on the south side, has a low stone wall on two sides and may have been extended southwards at some stage. The garden here is at a higher level than the adjacent field. The north-eastern wall has a stone stile with a possible goose hole next to it. A former central path, now grassed over, leads from the door of the house to a wicket gate in the south wall, probably a late feature. The second garden, the orchard (still planted with fruit trees), lies to the west between the small garden and the road. Roughly rectangular in shape, its south corner has been cut off by road widening. The stone walls are about 2.5m high, topped by nineteenth-century coping of upright stones. A linking doorway between the two gardens is situated in the east corner, on the outside of which is a dilapidated earth closet with a blocked door into the orchard. In the north corner an arched entrance, dating to 1590-1690, was probably originally sited in the north wall of the forecourt, the wall here made higher to accommodate the archway - a simple round-headed arch with dressed light coloured sandstone details. The archway and north corner of the orchard wall are not shown on an 1811 survey but appear in a watercolour painting of 1840-50. Sources: Cadw 1995: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Clwyd, 78-80 (ref: PGW(C) 29). Ordnance Survey 25-inch map: sheet Flintshire XVII.1 (1899, second edition). Additional notes: David Leighton