PGW(C)74(WRE)

Trevalyn House  

II*  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Wrexham  

Rossett  

336799  

356523  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Informal pleasure grounds; formal garden; rockery; walled kitchen garden.  

1754; nineteenth century; c. 1900.  

Trevalyn House is located in the Alyn valley, south of the village of Rossett. It is registered for the survival of its nineteenth-century pleasure grounds, which include a substantial rockery and some fine mature trees, both coniferous and deciduous, and for its well-preserved kitchen garden walls. There is group value with the Grade II Listed house and the former stable block (LBs 16374-5). The house was built in 1754 but the landscaping visible today dates from the nineteenth century when the estate was occupied by the Townsend family; the grounds may have been enlarged to the north at this time. Although little is known about the history of the gardens some of the specimen trees must have been planted in the eighteenth century, probably when the house was built. For several decades in the post-war period the house was used as a hospital and various extensions have encroached upon gardens on the west side of the house; an elaborate formal garden to the west of the house, which included a conservatory and a pergola, has been lost. The pleasure grounds and kitchen garden occupy a rectangular area around the house, the kitchen garden on its east side. The house and grounds were approached from the main entrance and lodge in the north-east corner, off Manor Lane. The entrance is flanked by dressed stone walls and rusticated piers, the lodge on the north side. The drive runs westwards to curve south towards the south front of the house. A back drive, also off Manor Lane, runs along the east side of the house to join the main drive south of the house. A further approach from Cox Lane, with a lodge, on the south boundary of the grounds, is now disused. The layout of the grounds is largely informal woodland and lawn with more formal areas to the south and west of the house. The main drive, lined with oak trees, runs through an area of rough grass flanked either side by belts of trees, including some large conifers. A broader belt of woodland down the west boundary is dominated by mixed mature deciduous trees with an understorey of ornamental shrubs. To the south of the house is a lawn bounded on the south by a straight ha-ha which affords views from the garden out across the unornamented fields beyond. A wide gravel path leads from the centre of the house to the ha-ha, with stone steps up the parapet wall. East and south-east of the house, towards the east boundary, are some large specimen conifers and a belt of mixed woodland. Photographs from the 1880s show that the garden north-west of the house was a highly elaborate formal garden of island beds with raised stone edgings; these have all completely gone. But west of the extension to the former hospital is a large rockery, already in place in the 1880s. It consists of mounds of rockwork with narrow winding paths edged with boulders between them. The rockery is planted with mixed ornamental trees, including copper beech, ginkgo and dwarf conifers. In a grassy area west of the new hospital wing, near the drive, is a twentieth-century feature consisting of an octagonal concrete pillar set in a central raised area of limestone rocks backed on the west by an arc of yew hedging. A formal, geometric layout of paths and plant beds in a square area on the south front of the extension, is also a recent feature. The kitchen garden lies north-east of the house. It is rectangular and bounded by brick walls up to about 3.5m high, the north wall lower, with doorways in the south, east and north walls. Against the east end of the south wall is a small brick building. The garden is now largely disused and grassed over with trees and shrubs, but the remains of perimeter and central paths can still be discerned. The central north-south path is flanked by some old espalier apple trees. To the east is an old orchard with some fruit trees remaining. To its south-east is an overgrown area with a partly demolished sunken vegetable clamp. To the south of the kitchen garden is a walled annexe with the remains of glasshouses and brick bothies within and around it, and the remains of a subterranean boiler house. Setting - The estate is surrounded by farmland, the gardens and wooded grounds providing a setting for the house. Significant views - From the south front of the house the ha-ha bounding the lawn affords views out across the farmland beyond. Sources: Cadw 1995: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Clwyd, 256-9 (ref: PGW(C)74(WRE)). First-edition Ordnance Survey 25-inch map: Denbighshire XXII.9 (1871). Additional notes: D.K.Leighton