PGW(Po)32(POW)

Vaynor Park  

I  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Powys  

Berriew  

317376  

300272  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Landscape park; formal and informal garden.  

c. 1640; c. 1840.  

Vaynor Park is registered for its well-preserved early nineteenth century landscape park, with earlier origins, seventeenth-century entrance court and garden terrace, overlain by Victorian and early twentieth-century features. Both park and garden contain some fine mature trees. The registered gardens and parkland have important group value with the grade II* listed house (LB: 7689) and stable block (LB: 16401) and grade II listed coach house (LB: 16402) and garden terraces (LB: 16400) together with other estate buildings. Vaynor Park is situated on steeply rolling ground to the south-west of the village of Berriew. The house lies on high ground in the centre of its landscape park. The house is a substantial early seventeenth-century brick house with the entrance front on the west, facing a walled courtyard closed on the west side by the gatehouse and stable range. The house and grounds were re-modelled in the mid-nineteenth century by Thomas Penson for John Winder Lyon-Winder. The park occupies rolling ground around the house to the southwest of the village of Berriew. The main drive enters the park in the east corner. To the south of the entrance is a small, single-storey brick lodge of cruciform plan with a slate roof and central tall chimney. The lodge was designed by Thomas Penson and is contemporary with the alterations to the house in c. 1840. The drive climbs westwards through the park, curving round to the north of the house, then southwards to the gatehouse. A branch continues south-westwards to run past the kitchen garden and continues westwards on a ridge top across the park. Just before the kitchen garden another branch runs southwards to farm buildings and then south-east along another ridge top to a secondary entrance on the south boundary of the park. A track which branches north-eastwards off the main drive, to the south of Crane Coppice, is the eastern end of the original drive. It skirts the south-east side of the wood, in a small valley and then turns northwards to run along the east boundary of the park to a former entrance in the north corner. The park can be divided into two main areas, which correspond with its main phases of development. The oldest part of the park is the largely wooded, steep-valleyed northern part, to the north of the house. The more open area, to the south and east of the house, was added later. The northern part consists mainly of a steep-sided valley, orientated south-west/north-east. To the west of the house is a high ridge of rolling pasture above the valley, with some hedge-line oaks on former field boundaries and a few isolated oaks. This part of the park encompasses Kennel Wood, Pen y Parc, Crane Coppice and the valley, and is the oldest part of the present park. The park was probably developed in the early seventeenth century, when the house was built. The earliest plan showing the park is the estate map of 1746 for Lord Hereford. The southern part of the park occupies rolling ground to the south and east of the house. A large proportion of the park is open grassland, dotted with specimen trees and a few clumps. Trees are mostly oak, beech and cedars, with some other conifers, including wellingtonias. The 1889 and 1903 Ordnance Survey maps show the park layout much as it is today. In the early twentieth century exotic introductions, including redwood, firs and cedars were planted in the park and walks were established in the woodland to the west of the gatehouse. A flight of stone steps leading off the drive to the kitchen garden leads to one of these walks and others survive. Most of the garden occupies an L-shaped area to the east, south and south-west of the house, bounded on the east and south by a steep, curving scarp. The entrance court to the west of the house forms the remainder. The earliest evidence for a garden at Vaynor Park is the 1746 estate map, which shows a formal layout, parts of which survive. The main feature is the entrance courtyard, bounded then as now by house, stables and walls. At that time, however, it was laid out formally in an upper and lower terrace, with a central axial walk to the front door and a flight of steps up the terrace. Flanking the house, against the north and south walls, were two square pavilions. To the south was a semi-circular apron of grass and four rectangular features, possibly flowerbeds, around it. Today, the court is laid out with a central grass oval, planted with two weeping birch trees, around which is a gravel drive. Both stylistically, and in its integral relationship with the house, the entrance courtyard is likely to be contemporary with the house, dating to c.1640. To the east of the house is a gravel terrace and a level lawn, below which is a grass slope, planted with shrubs, to the boundary. On the north edge of the garden is a belt of mixed trees, including two large cedars of Lebanon. The south side of the garden has both formal and informal areas. Next to the house is a stone paved terrace (LB: 16400) with short stretches of stone balustrading, in a fretwork pattern, at the east and west ends. The terrace is revetted with a high brick wall. The terrace to the south of the house would also appear to be part of the original, seventeenth-century garden, although it was later modified. Below the terrace, and continuing westwards to the garden boundary, is a wide grass walk. The walk continues into a plantation of tall Douglas firs under-planted with mainly evergreen shrubs, in particular rhododendrons and azaleas. Except at the west end, where the ground rises, the walk is bounded on the south by a steep grass scarp. To the south of the grass walk the character of the garden is different: it consists mainly of lawn planted with ornamental trees and shrubs, with a formal, semi-circular arrangement of beds cut into a levelled area of lawn below the house. This can be reached by a flight of stone steps, flanked on the west by three columnar cypresses, which descends the grass walk bank opposite the terrace steps. Below is a slope down to a perimeter walk and boundary, where there are further mature specimen deciduous and coniferous trees, including cedars and wellingtonias. Large old rhododendrons grow on the steep slope down to the walk and towards its west end a flight of rough stone steps, flanked by rhododendrons and hydrangeas, curves down to it. At the north end of the house, is a small, sunken garden area enclosed on the west by a two-storey block and on the north by a brick parapet wall above a steep drop to the garden boundary and park. This area was created when the former kitchen was demolished in the 1960s. It consists of a rectangular paved area with a clipped box and yew plantings and brick-edged borders. Two flights of dressed stone steps on the east side lead up to a small brick paved area with four beds and a central sundial on a circular base. Major alterations, designed by Thomas Penson, were made to the garden and entrance court in the 1840s, the layout of the present garden appearing on the tithe map of 1844. Penson altered the terrace, made the green walk and altered the entrance court. A plan of proposals for changes, dated 1841, shows the new layout for the entrance court, with no pavilions, no terracing and a central oval, as it is now. Further changes occurred in the early part of the twentieth-century with the creation of the woodland area at the west end of the garden and the addition of Asiatic introductions including azaleas, rhododendrons and hydrangeas. The walled kitchen garden lies about 250m south-west of the house on a south-facing slope. The garden covers about 1 1/2 acres and is surrounded by high red brick, stone capped walls which stand up to 4m high. There are entrance doorways in the east and west walls. The interior of the kitchen garden has been remodelled. Traces of whitewash and roof lines show the position of lost greenhouses and ranges. A door leading through to a bothy, or boiler house, on the north still survives in the wall to the west of the two-storey gardener's house, which stands in the middle of the north wall. Built into the bank on the opposite side of the drive, near the gardener's house, is a horizontal tunnel, thought to have been a root vegetable store. On the 1746 estate map the area of the kitchen garden is labelled ‘New Orchard above barn’. It is not clear if it was walled at that time. The tithe map of 1844 shows it transformed into a walled kitchen garden. The map also records a small area of orchard to the north-east. The 1889 Ordnance Survey map shows the interior divided into six rectangular compartments each surrounded by paths. A substantial glasshouse, with a projecting central section, stood on the south face of the north wall. Setting: In a magnificent situation on steeply rolling ground to the south-west of the village of Berriew. Significant Views: From the house and terraces across the gardens and parkland and the surrounding unspoilt rural landscape. Sources: Cadw 1999: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Powys, pp 255-259 (ref: PGW (Po)32(POW)).