PGW(Dy)2(CAM)

Laugharne Castle & Castle House  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Carmarthenshire  

Laugharne Township  

230225  

210772  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Reinstated early nineteenth century garden, with earlier features within the castle wards and defensive walls.  

1580s-90s; early nineteenth century; early 1990s.  

Registered for its historic interest as an unusual example of a picturesque garden laid out within a medieval castle. Its earliest garden remains date to the Tudor period but are limited to cobbling in the inner ward. The main garden, in the outer ward, has been restored and replanted by Cadw within its early nineteenth-century layout. The registered garden has group value with grade I listed building and scheduled monument, Laugharne Castle (LB: 9653; Cm003), the grade I listed outer gatehouse (LB: 9652), grade II* Castle House (LB: 9657), grade II early nineteenth-century gazebo (LB: 9656) and the grade II listed boundary walls (LB: 9654 & 9655). It is also notable for its literary associations with the author Richard Wilson and the poet Dylan Thomas. Laugharne is a historic seaside town some 12.5 km (8 miles) to the south-west of Carmarthen. At the southern end of Market Street, which still retains much of its Georgian character, is the imposing Outer Gatehouse of Laugharne Castle; immediately to the north-east of the Gatehouse is Castle House. The first known garden at Laugharne castle was created in the late sixteenth-century when it was in the ownership of Sir John Perrot. Sir John had been granted the castle in 1575, when it is probable that he began the first phase of the alterations to convert it into a mansion. These alterations included turning the Outer Ward into a garden and creating a courtyard garden with decorative cobbling and a fountain in the Inner Ward. Traces of this cobbling survive. Castle House was built in about 1730. In 1787, Elizabeth Ravenscroft inherited the castle and its grounds under the terms of the will of Pennoyre Watkins, her grandfather. In 1798, Elizabeth married Colonel Richard Isaac Starke and it was the Starke family who modified and altered the old Castle House in about 1810. When Elizabeth Ravenscroft inherited the castle it was in a ruinous condition and work was undertaken to consolidate and rebuild some of the structure and to establish the gardens. As the Starke family owned Castle House and the adjacent castle, the garden extended to both properties. This remained the case until 1973, when Miss Anne Starke placed the castle in the guardianship of the Secretary of State for Wales. For much of the time from the end of the eighteenth-century onwards the house was occupied by the family, but between 1934 and 1947 it was rented to the author, Richard Hughes, who was a friend of Dylan Thomas and Sir Clough Williams-Ellis. The garden of Castle House remains private but the garden within the castle is open to the public. The present layout is based on that of the early nineteenth-century and the garden was restored and replanted by Cadw in the early 1990s. The gardens that were created within the picturesque ruins were not to every traveller's taste. J.T. Barber, who published an account of his tour of South Wales and Monmouthshire in 1803, was a great lover of the picturesque. He commented only that the ruins are `ivy-mantled'. However, B. H. Malkin, in an account of his excursions, found that the castle itself was a `picturesque subject ... but the proprietor has laid out the inner court as a modern garden, and in every respect done his utmost to destroy the character of the ruin towards the water. Not only the area, but even one of the towers, is converted to the purposes of horticulture, and filled with incongruous ornaments of evergreens and flowering shrubs'. The garden in the Outer Ward retains its early nineteenth-century layout of lawns, shrubbery, formal rose beds and borders. It is enclosed by rubble stone walls on all but the north side to the east of the outer gatehouse, where the curtain wall was rebuilt as a high brick garden wall. A Victorian glasshouse stood against the east end of this wall but it has been completely removed. Paths surfaced in crushed cockle shells, as were the originals, bound the lawns, beds and borders and wind through the shrubbery. The lawn occupying the west end of the ward was once a croquet lawn. A raised path runs along the inside of the south-east curtain wall and originally extended to the first-floor oriel window at the east end of the hall, against the south curtain wall of the inner ward. From it there are fine views out over the parapet to the estuary, sea and, in the distance, the Gower. The circular gazebo is situated half way along this walk, built on the foundations of a medieval tower and overlooking the estuary. The shrubbery lies at the east end of the garden. It is informally laid out, divided into four sections by paths. Cadw’s replanting scheme for the shrubbery was guided by the advice provided in Henry Phillips, Sylva Florifera (1823). The formal rose beds lie in a rectangular area close to the north wall, in front of which is a long border. The beds are bounded by clipped box hedging with narrow paths between them. Care was taken to select rose varieties known to have been grown in the early to mid nineteenth-century in the replanting scheme. To the west of the rose beds is a circular feature that is part of the original design, although it is not known what was at the centre. As part of the recreation of the garden a tulip tree was planted in the middle. By 1990, when the restoration scheme for the garden was begun, there was little left of it except the basic layout and a few mature and over-mature trees. Almost all the planting, therefore, was new. Photographs from the 1920s also provided useful information on the appearance of parts of the garden at that time. The rose arches across the path linking the glasshouse on the castle side to the shrubbery, which appear in the photographs, have not been restored. A narrow border, which ran southwards along the inner side of the curtain wall from the gazebo, has also been omitted from the restoration scheme. A few of the mature trees have been retained, in particular a cedar of Lebanon and a holm oak, which stand at either end of the shrubbery. There are two connecting doors in the north-eastern wall of the outer ward, between the castle grounds and the garden to the rear of Castle House. The remains of a glasshouse, which was back-to-back with that within the outer ward, and a substantial potting shed, are situated in this part of the garden. Significant Views: Panoramic views out over the Taf estuary from the raised walk and the gazebo. Sources: Cadw 2002: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire, 33-34 (ref: PGW(Dy)2(CAM)).