PGW(Po)22(POW)

Broadheath House  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Powys  

Presteigne  

333629  

263600  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Georgian house, partially remodelled by Clough Williams-Ellis; formal garden in a series of 'garden rooms' with pools, walks and yew hedging; shrubbery, vegetable gardens and new nuttery.  

c. 1920  

Broadheath is registered as a well-preserved and charming example of a set-piece Edwardian Italianate garden incorporating a series of ‘garden rooms’ with pools, walks and yew hedging. Broadheath has important historical associations with Clough Williams-Ellis (1883-1978) who partially remodelled the house and designed the gardens in the 1920s. The registered garden has group value with the house and associated buildings including the carriage house, stable, former head gardener’s cottage and the barn/loggia. Broad Heath is situated to the east of Presteigne, set back to the south of the B4362, partly hidden behind a high yew hedge. It lies on flat land, on the flood plain of the River Lugg. Broadheath is a small Georgian manor house (LB: 8930) of about 1750, a remodelling of an earlier house. In about 1925 Clough Williams-Ellis was commissioned to further remodel the house and design the garden. The gardens lie to the north, east and south of the house. The south front of the house opens out on to a broad, crazy-paved, stone terrace, which runs along the length of the house and on to an area of lawn beyond. This area is enclosed on the south-west by the carriage house. The barn/loggia is the focus of the garden. As part of his design for the garden, Williams-Ellis altered a timber framed barn to link the house to the existing barns, which enclose the garden on the east. The south wall of the barn was removed, the interior plastered and the floor paved with stone random paving, creating a garden room, or loggia. The loggia overlooks a sophisticated formal Arts and Crafts stone-paved, rectangular sunken garden. The garden is arranged into six symmetrical beds, two square and four rectangular, with those closest to the loggia, the square beds, having since been converted to pools. A sundial stands in the centre of the rectangular beds and a pair of narrow borders run along the west and east sides of the sunken garden. The barn encloses the sunken garden on the east and a stone wall, supported by stone buttresses, continues along the remaining length of the garden. This connects to the south cross wall, which forms the southern boundary of the sunken garden. An arch supporting an ornamental iron gate is located in the centre of the cross wall, aligned with the sundial and creating an axis through the gardens. The gateway leads into a second formal garden enclosure known as the ‘Well Garden’. A broad grass path leads to a paved circle surrounding an antique well-head. Two small paved paths run east and west off the paved circle with a pair of wide herbaceous borders backed by mature yew hedges either side of the paths. A doorway though the east barn connects the sunken garden with an informal kitchen garden; a rectangular enclosure running parallel to the sunken garden. The early Ordnance Survey maps show it in use as an orchard. The garden to the north, between the house and the road, is about 1 acre (0.4ha.) in extent, bounded by a wall on the east and south, yew hedges and shrubbery on the north and west. To the north of a gravelled walk alongside the house is a wide, slightly sunken expanse of rough grass, the site of a croquet lawn. The 25-inch Ordnance Survey (1903) shows a sundial in the north garden, which was possibly moved to form part of the layout of the sunken garden (Ordnance Survey 1928). Significant View: From the house terrace and loggia across the gardens and towards the Hindwell Brook and backdrop of wooded hills. Sources: Cadw 1999: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Powys, 10-13 (ref: PGW (Po)22(POW)). Ordnance Survey 25-inch map: sheet Herefordshire X4 (1903) Ordnance Survey 25-inch map: sheet Herefordshire X4 (1928)