PGW(C)39(DEN)

Plas Newydd, Llanfair Dyffryn Clwyd  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Denbighshire  

Llanfair Dyffryn Clwyd  

313870  

355884  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Small park; walled garden; formal and informal garden.  

Seventeenth, eighteenth and late nineteenth century.  

The registered area at Plas Newydd represents the development of the grounds between the seventeenth and nineteenth century and includes a seventeenth century walled garden and small eighteenth or early nineteenth century park. The grounds provide the setting to the grade II listed house and have group value with the house and associated estate buildings. Plas Newydd (LB:716; NPRN 27762) a house with origins in the seventeenth century, is located on level ground in the Vale of Clwyd, to the south-east of Ruthin. Gardens lie to the south and east of the house. Beyond is a small area of parkland separated from the garden by a long, stone-built ha-ha which serpentines along the garden boundary from the coach house to the north-west almost to the east boundary. This gives fine views from the house and garden out across the park. The gardens are laid out in compartments to the south and east of the house, with a rectangular open lawn bounded by gently sloping grassy banks with flat tops to the south and west. It is bounded by the ha-ha. This plan was in existence by 1874 (1st ed. Ordnance Survey map). The lawn to the south of the house is linked by a path to a shrub border on the east with an arch leading to another area of planting. A small wedge-shaped formal parterre garden of box-edged rose beds is situated to the east of this. An old orchard to the south of this is walled on the east but hedged on the south side facing the park. Only a few fruit trees survive. The east boundary of the garden is lined with a perimeter belt of trees including beech and Scots pine. The walled garden (LB: 25224) lies to the north of the old orchard and box garden, and is reached by a door in the south wall, and two doors in the north wall. Its walls are part brick and part stone, the latter probably seventeenth-century in date. The north wall is entirely of stone and about 3m high. The eastern brick wall is buttressed and extends into the orchard. The house and garden are flanked on the west and south by an area of farmland that has been given a park-like appearance by the removal of field boundaries, probably in the eighteenth or early nineteenth century. The present layout was in existence by 1874 (Ordnance Survey). The park is pasture, with a few isolated oaks and a clump of mixed coniferous and deciduous trees in the southeast corner, planted in about 1930 to hide a red brick house. The drive, a former lane, approaches the house from the south-east. It bounds the park on the east side and the drive proper leads off it to the north front of the house. It is lined with a row of limes probably dating to the eighteenth century when improvements were being made to the house. The north side of the house, which forms part of the approach, is informal, planted with mature trees and shrubs. A lodge was built in the nineteenth century at the junction of the lane and the by-road which bounds the south side of the park, and there is another lodge at the north end of the park. A small stream bounds the park to the west. Setting: Situated in a rural setting in the Vale of Clwyd to the southeast of the small town of Ruthin. Significant View: The haha allows fine views from the house and garden across the park and rural backdrop. Sources: Cadw 1995: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Clwyd, 204-6 (ref: PGW(C)39). Ordnance Survey, 25-inch map: Denbighshire XIX, sheet 12 (first edition 1874).