Broad Heath House, originally a Georgian house (30503), was partially remodelled in an early private commission of Clough Williams-Ellis (1883-1978) who cleared and redesigned a significant portion of the site. The garden was already partly developed by the later nineteenth century and Williams-Ellis incorporated relics of an earlier garden into his design, including the orchard/pear trees, and conifers on the north-east boundary corner, alongside the road.

The gardens lie to the north, east and south of the house. The south front of the house opens out on to a broad, crazy-paved, stone terrace, which runs along the length of the house and on to an area of lawn beyond. This area is enclosed on the south-west by the carriage house. The barn/loggia focus of the garden. As part of his design for the garden, Williams-Ellis altered a timber framed barn to link the house to the existing barns, which enclose the garden on the east. The south wall of the barn was removed, the interior plastered and the floor paved with stone random paving, creating a garden room, or loggia. The loggia overlooks a sophisticated formal Arts and Crafts stone-paved, rectangular sunken garden. The garden is arranged into six symmetrical beds, two square and four rectangular, with those closest to the loggia, the square beds, having since been converted to pools. A sundial stands in the centre of the rectangular beds and a pair of narrow borders run along the west and east sides of the sunken garden. The barn encloses the sunken garden on the east and a stone wall, supported by stone buttresses, continues along the remaining length of the garden. This connects to the south cross wall, which forms the southern boundary of the sunken garden. An arch supporting an ornamental iron gate is located in the centre of the cross wall, aligned with the sundial and creating an axis through the gardens. The gateway leads into a second formal garden enclosure known as the ‘Well Garden’. A broad grass path leads to a paved circle surrounding an antique well-head. Two small paved paths run east and west off the paved circle with a pair of wide herbaceous borders backed by mature yew hedges either side of the paths.

A doorway though the east barn connects the sunken garden with an informal kitchen garden; a rectangular enclosure running parallel to the sunken garden. The early Ordnance Survey maps show it in use as an orchard. The garden to the north, between the house and the road, is about 1 acre (0.4ha.) in extent, bounded by a wall on the east and south, yew hedges and shrubbery on the north and west. To the north of a gravelled walk alongside the house is a wide, slightly sunken expanse of rough grass, the site of a croquet lawn. The 25-inch Ordnance Survey (1903) shows a sundial in the north garden, which was possibly moved to form part of the layout of the sunken garden (Ordnance Survey 1928).
To the north of a turning circle in front of the house is a small area of lawn dominated by three large clumps of rhododendron which are enclosed by yew, holly and mature trees alongside the road.

Sources:
Cadw 1999: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Powys, 10-13 (ref: PGW Po22(POW)).
Ordnance Survey second edition 25-inch map: sheet Radnorshire XXV.4.

RCAHMW, 30 June 2022