PGW(Po)9(POW)

Bronllys Hospital  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Powys  

Bronllys  

313486  

235036  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Early twentieth-century hospital set in eighteenth-/nineteenth-century grounds.  

Park and mansion from at least late nineteenth century. Hospital 1913-20  

Registered for its historic interest as a purpose-built tuberculosis hospital, with associated landscaping, set within earlier eighteenth and nineteenth century parkland. The original house at Bronllys Hospital, Pont-y-Wal, is a three gabled, two-storeyed late nineteenth-century house, built of local stone. The house is situated on the brow of a gentle hill and faces south, looking over sloping parkland with extensive views of the Brecon Beacons. The park is depicted on early Ordnance Survey mapping (1888 -1904). The pleasure grounds and gardens at Bronllys are composed of a series of historic overlays. The first recorded house on the site was in 1759 but no obvious evidence remains of any eighteenth-century pleasure grounds unless the woodlands immediately to the west and east of the house are included. Originally ‘Pontywal’, the site had a kitchen garden, pond, aviary, and was fronted by earthwork terracing. There was a farmyard with adjacent feeder pond, the whole set in agricultural land with woodland and rides to the N, picturesque paths and shrubberies and trees around the residential areas. This had not changed significantly by 1904, though the east pond had silted up and glasshouses had been added to the north wall of the kitchen garden. The house was rebuilt in the late nineteenth century and this seems to have had more of an influence on the gardens than the parkland. By 1910 the estate was owned by the Powell family and it is believed that they sold the estate in 1913 when it was bought by the Crown Estates as a hospital site. The centre parkland was lost to development, the lake filled in and the new east drive established, changing the orientation of the estate. Small orchard areas were established to the north of the hospital and east of the new Estate Office. Before 1913 a cricket pitch had already been established in the western area of the park, to the west of the drive. The hospital is arranged on a widely spaced pavilion-system plan. It was built by Edwin T. Hall and Stanley Hall in c. 1913-20, on open land descending to the south. Built as a TB sanatorium, many of the south-facing sides of the wards open on to verandahs. A central corridor, running north-south, links the wards. The central western pavilion is notable in being built on a butterfly plan. A sophisticated Arts and Crafts chapel with modernist influences lies in its own grounds some 50m south-west of the main hospital. It was built in c. 1920, following a £5000 gift from Sir David R. Llewellyn and H. Seymour Berry (Lord Buckland of Bwlch) and was dedicated in July 1920. The Basil Webb Hall was a recreation hall, a memorial to Tom Henry Basil Webb, funded by Lieut. Col Sir Henry Webb at a cost of £5,000. It was opened by King George V and Queen Mary on 17th July 1920. A similarly styled building to the chapel, with a slate hung gable, it lies 50m to the east of the main hospital. A croquet/bowls lawn lies immediately adjacent to and above it on the east. Setting - situated in a rural setting with extensive views of the Brecon Beacons. Sources Cadw 1995: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Powys (ref: PGW(Po)xx). Ordnance Survey 25-inch map, sheet: Brecknock XXII.12 (editions of 1888 and 1904).