PGW(Gt)1(MON)

Dingestow Court  

II*  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Monmouthshire  

Mitchel Troy  

345182  

209645  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Mid nineteenth-century medium-sized landscape park with mid and late nineteenth-century garden layout, part formal, part informal. Some surviving earlier features.  

c. 1845; c. 1883.  

Dingestow Court is registered as a good example of a mid-nineteenth century landscape park with a mid to late nineteenth century garden layout, incorporating some earlier features and providing the setting to the house. The gardens have historical associations with the well-known designer Edward Milner (1819-1884) who laid out the gardens in the 1880s. The registered area has group value with the associated estate buildings, including Dingestow Court (LB: 2061), the former stable block (LB: 25779; 25780). The house lies at the northern end of a small landscape park. The park was landscaped after the 1760s, when James Duberley bought the estate. At this time (1789 plan) the public road to the north of the house ran immediately north of it, partly along the line of the present east drive. The road was moved to its present position in the mid nineteenth-century by Samuel Bosanquet IV. The ornamental lake also dates from the mid-nineteenth century, replacing earlier fishponds. Much of the park planting of individual parkland trees, both coniferous and deciduous, and clumps of oak, lime, beech and horse chestnut, dates to the nineteenth-century. The ha-ha (pre-1789) provides an uninterrupted view of the park from the garden. There are two drives to the house with a lodge at each entrance, from the east (Lower Lodge) and west (Upper Lodge). The east drive is the main one, and its western end, where it approaches the house, was designed by Edward Milner in a sweeping curve through an area of specimen trees and shrubs. The gardens lie to the north, southeast and east of the house. There are three main components: the formal terrace along the southeast front of the house, lawns, and trees, which lie mainly in the eastern half of the garden. Within this framework are further features - a ha-ha along the southeast edge of the garden; gravel paths; a mound in the north corner, next to the east drive (called 'Happy Dick's mount after Richard Jones, the last Jones to live here, who died in the 1760s); a small pond to the northwest of it, on the opposite side of the drive; and a long straight grass walk called 'The Vista' lined with nut trees, Scots pines, sweet chestnuts and other trees, which runs eastwards from the east end of the house. This layout is the result of an overlay of several periods of construction and planting, the main ones of which are the mid-nineteenth century and the mid-1880s. A 1789 plan shows a formal layout, surviving features of which are the mount and the ha-ha. By the 1840s some of the formal elements had gone and plans show a proposed terrace and paths south of the house, all of which were implemented. In 1883 Edward Milner prepared a plan for proposed changes to the gardens and all of his proposals were implemented except for the elaborate parterre to the southeast of the terrace. To the north he proposed a wide gravel area, with new trees to the south of the east drive. The terrace along the south front is modified with a wide gravel walk, grass banks, steps at the east and west ends of the south side and curving paths to east and west. The east path lead to a circular area labelled ‘the seat’. A circular rustic summerhouse (now gone) was situated here but part of the path survives. To the east of the house were further winding walks and a straight walk, The Vista, which remains. To the west of the garden Milner proposed a rectilinear fruit garden (now the kitchen garden) and to the south of it, a balloon shaped kitchen garden, both remain. There have been a few changes in the twentieth century. In the 1920s the lawn in front of the terrace was levelled to form a lawn tennis court, and at about the same time the steps near the west end of the terrace were removed and since replaced. In 1933/34 the grass bank of the terrace was replaced by a stone wall. At some stage all the curving paths except that from the east end of the terrace to the ha-ha became grassed over. The ha-ha has been remade as a grass bank and fence. A new raised gravel walk with retaining wall below has been made (1988) running eastwards from the east end of the house to a modern stone statue of a lighthouse (by Philip Chatfield). A gravel path in exactly this position is proposed on the Milner plan. At the east end of the garden the boundary (fence) has been pushed further out (c. 1982) and a hard tennis court added. Significant View: The principal view is that from the terrace on the south side of the house. This takes in the sloping field down to the lake, the lake, the field with clumps on the far side of the lake, and the wood known as The Park on the ridge beyond the A449. Sources: Cadw 1994: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales: Gwent, 37-38 (ref: PGW (Gt)1).