PGW(Po)24(POW)

Stanage Park  

I  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Powys  

Knighton  

333147  

271955  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Extensive and intact Picturesque parkland around Romantic, castellated house. Formal gardens. Victorian arboretum.  

c. 1803, c. 1880.  

Registered at grade I as an outstanding example of picturesque parkland laid out by the famous landscaper Humphry Repton (1752-1818). Stanage is the last and most complete of his three recognised Welsh landscape commissions. Repton's picturesque parkland improvements, castellated house and enclosed garden survive almost intact and are recorded in a 'Red Book', still kept at the house. A later nineteenth-century arboretum and formal terraced gardens lie to the north and west of the house. The registered park and garden shares important group value with the grade II* listed country house and its associated outbuildings and parkland structures. Stanage Park (LB: 9045) is set on a rise between two hills near the centre of an outstanding picturesque parkland. Two drives, one from the north-east, the second from the north-west approach the house through the east park (Finches Park) and the west (Baynham Park). The natural landform and the position of the drives renders the house cleverly obscured from view until the final approaches, a common landscape feature associated with Repton. The early history of the park at Stanage Park is unclear. What is evident from the 'Red Book' is that Repton did not undertake any large-scale earth-moving or tree-planting at the site but augmented what was already there; the woods, the stream, the deer park and ponds and the drive, 'the wild, shaggy genius of Stanage'. Most of Repton's proposals concentrated on the east park and the area around the house. Repton's tree planting proposals, undertaken from 1807 onward, were quite restricted. An existing deer park was retained in the west park, perhaps establishing its wooded character and the more open ornamental character of the east park which was recorded on the 1888 Ordnance Survey map. The main tree planting in the west park and the park plantations including Park Bank Wood, is not believed to have occurred until after 1807 when a William Hope began to plant around 65,000 trees; larch, oak, Spanish and horse chestnut, for Charles Rogers, drawing from the inspiration of Thomas Johnes' planting at Hafod. The gardens and wooded pleasure grounds of Stanage Park lie to the east and north of the house. In total the gardens (excluding the utilitarian garden) and arboretum cover about 10 acres. The garden is composed primarily of two large, levelled, lawned terraces which are separated by the east drive as it enters the forecourt. The terraces are enclosed by an ornamental crenellated stone wall on the south and east. The pleasure grounds lie within Park Bank Wood, the hill above the house to the north. The lines of old rides and walks, which survive as forestry tracks, run around the hill. Near the centre of the wood, there is a late nineteenth-century feature, the Labyrinth; an overgrown rectangular maze of beech and yew laid out around a central oak. Above the Labyrinth, on the north-west side of the hill, some surviving mature broadleaf planting marks the position of the Ladies' Avenue, where the views were enjoyed out over Knighton and the Teme valley. Nearby is Jubilee point where a beacon was lit to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1897. Back down the track on the east is the entrance to an extensive Victorian arboretum, which lies on the south-east side of the wood. The arboretum dates from about 1840 onwards. By 1900, the planting had been developed by Charles Coltman-Rogers, a great planter and keen amateur arboriculturalist, regularly contributing articles to national journals and writing a standard text, Conifers, in 1920. It was he who set about creating the main part of the arboretum and inserting ornamental stands within the park plantations towards the end of the nineteenth century. The walled kitchen garden and its eastern extension lie to the west and north of the north garden and house on south sloping ground below Park Bank Wood. The walled kitchen garden covers about 1.5 acres and is surrounded by a rubble stone wall which rises to about 1.5m along its south and west side, with higher, stone capped red brick walls on the east and north. Glasshouse footings survive along the entire length of the north wall which rises to about 4m in height. In the north-east corner of the kitchen garden is the head gardener's house. A path, which runs between the north-east corner of the kitchen garden and the gardener's house, leads into the eastern area of the kitchen garden. The east garden is enclosed on the north and east by stone and brick walls which rise to about 2m and contain, in the north-east corner, an ornamental late nineteenth-century arched gateway that leads into the woodland behind. On the south, the garden is enclosed by the red brick wall of the terrace. This is a hollow wall, once heated by the line of flues and stoke-holes which run along its north side. On the south side of the wall the brick face is studded with nails and nail holes and at the west end of the terrace there is a Victorian half-span greenhouse. In the centre of the east garden is a large, detached greenhouse backed by a high red brick wall. The actual position of an early productive garden on site is unclear but by the mid nineteenth century it seems that the main kitchen garden had been established. By 1889 the two parts of the kitchen garden, which were recorded on the Ordnance Survey map, were laid out with internal and peripheral paths lined with trees. The glass range was in place, running along the entire length of the south face of the north wall and further areas of glass were situated in the east garden and along the outside of its south wall. Sources: Cadw 1999: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Powys, (ref: PGW (Po)24(POW)). Ordnance Survey first-edition six-inch maps: Shropshire LXXVI.16 (1889)