PGW(Dy)36(PEM)

Lawrenny  

II  

01/02/2022  

Designated  

Pembrokeshire  

Martletwy  

201497  

206930  

Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces  

Small eighteenth-century park and garden replaced by more extensive parkland and formal garden adjacent to the house in the nineteenth century; walled kitchen garden.  

Eighteenth century; mid-nineteenth century.  

Registered for the survival of a grand, mid-nineteenth century terrace and other garden features and planting, associated with a house, now gone. The small eighteenth-century park and garden were replaced in the nineteenth-century by more extensive parkland and formal gardens adjacent to the house. An earlier eighteenth-century large walled kitchen garden also survives. There are spectacular views from the terrace over the estuary to the south. The site of Lawrenny Castle lies about 11km south-west of Haverfordwest. The site has a history dating back to at least the sixteenth-century. It occupies a small, almost flat-topped peninsula to the immediate west of Lawrenny village. The most recent house, demolished in 1950, is surrounded by gardens which together are located within parkland. The design and layout of the eighteenth-century park and gardens was altered radically with the construction of the new house in 1856 when the site was re-fashioned. The mid-nineteenth century park was an open sweep of parkland of some 121 acres extending from the north of the house site to the west and south of it. The area is bounded on the north by the Garron Pill, on the east by Lawrenny village and the road north, on the west by the Daugleddau estuary, and on the south by the confluence of the Cresswell and Carew rivers. The park was created mid-century from 10-12 enclosures which included a horse park, an orchard, and 96 acres of woodland. Cutting through several enclosures was the Long Walk, a mid-eighteenth century avenue, now gone. The extent of the park by the late nineteenth-century is shown on the first edition Ordnance Survey map (1869). Much of the parkland to the north and west is now turned over to arable farming and `community forest'. To the south-east of the house the land is shown as dotted with trees on late nineteenth century maps but is now open ground. Woodland (Lawrenny Wood) still exists around the estuaries. The site lies within the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park and the National Trust owns part of the woodland to the south-west of the house site. The gardens lie around the house site, mostly to the north and north-west. The design and layout of the eighteenth century gardens was altered radically with the construction of the last house in 1856. The only surviving element from the eighteenth-century is the walled garden. Parts of the nineteenth-century gardens remain. The main features are the well-built terrace retaining wall to the south-east of the house and the protective wall and ditch that separated the garden from the deer park. There are essentially two drives, the main drive leads from the road, past St Caradoc’s church on the north side, through an entrance in what was the eighteenth-century boundary wall, and sweeps through woodland around to the north-east front of the house site. The service drive begins a little further to the north to link the former utilitarian elements of the walled garden. The area to the south-west of the church, between the wall and the house, is still much as the early maps show, with paths through woodland areas containing several areas of surviving woody species which predate the destruction of the house, and include some notable mature beech. To the south-west of the house site are the earthwork remains of a former enclosed, sunken, garden. Stretches of wall up to 2.5m high remain. Still visible are two small stone structures which may partly have been a viewing and sitting area overlooking the estuary. Surviving plantings around this garden include a mature prunus and a large example of a London plane, some 25m high. The walled garden occupies the north-west extent of the garden area and was mostly in existence in 1762, though its area was extended from 3 to 6 acres between 1842 and 1864. Linear earthwork features visible from the air may reflect its former extent and/or layout. The main walled enclosure is a trapezoid, long axis north-south, with stone rubble walls rising to 3m high. Entrances to the garden have been altered over time. The northern drive, off the village road, accesses an entrance which has changed in form and position. There are also entrances in the east and south walls. In 1887 the interior is shown divided into plots by paths laid in a grid, partly given over to fruit trees and with glasshouses to the north-east. A small rectangular enclosure conjoining on the north-west includes Rosehill, formerly the gardener’s house, in an area enclosed between 1842 and 1887. It was sub-divided by paths but is now a private garden. In the south-west corner was an ice house which survives as a mound. Contemporary on the east is a square enclosure, now overgrown, that included a linear range of glass and what may have been estate cottages or potting sheds. Within this walled area and built against the south-facing north wall is a row of glass that occupied most of this stretch of wall. Significant Views: There are spectacular views from the garden terrace over the estuary. Sources: Cadw 2002: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire, 244-8 (ref: PGW(Dy)36(PEM)). Ordnance Survey County Series six-inch plan: sheet Pembrokeshire XXXIV.7 (first edition 1863). Additional notes: D.K.Leighton