1. PGW Dy 41
Pigeonsford kitchen garden lies on the north flank of the small valley of the Nant Hawen, about 2km east of the village of Llangranog. On the other side of the valley, to the south, is the mansion of Pigeonsford, for which the walled garden was orriginally the kitchen garden; the garden is now separated from the house and estate to which it belonged. It is approached by walking through modern, well-maintained plantings in a field, through woodlands and across a wooden bridge, and a walk below the rubble-built garden wall alongside a stream to the site of an original (collapsed) Edwardian lean-to greenhouse.

The cultivated area is enclosed by a 3-4 m high wall, buttressed for stability on the SE, where a small part of the small-rubble-built wall has collapsed. Elsewhere, there are some telling cracks. The garden is entered through a gate adjacent to a well restored hexagonal gazebo at the NE corner. Built into a steep slope, the garden is well protected by the woods below.

The western wall is entirely of orange-red bricks, presumably of local original. The beds themselves, re-established and looking extremely healthy on the attention lavish for only 8 years, are laid out between lines of original (possibly 1940s-50s) concrete edging much of which has flaked and exfoliated in an unsatisfactory manner. There is a round-head Georgian doorwayed and fenestrated Accrington brick lean-to summerhouse of the 1940s built about halfway along the western wall. It has a shallow raking ?Westmorland slate roof, rapidly becoming engulfed in creepers.

The layout of the interior is original, divided into large beds by gravel paths, but the paths were edged with raised concrete in the 1920s. There are perimeter paths around the walls, with borders between the paths and the walls, two north-south paths and one central east-west path. Some original drains and drain covers remain. Only a few old fruit trees survive of early planting. A great range of herbaceous plants, fruit and vegetables were planted in the late twentieth century.

Outside the garden east wall is a small enclosure with a glasshouse at its south end. On the north it is enclosed by a wall and on part of the east side by a hedge. The south-facing glasshouse, built against a rendered stone wall, is now (in 2002) derelict but with many internal fittings.
CSB viii 00 (private visit)

2. The site includes an unusual 7-sided apple store, a 1930s gazebo (the one I thought was 1940s ? evidence) and it was apparently visited by David Lloyd George.

The garden to Pigeonsford house was a typical late-Victorian landscape, with examples of fine trees planted around the house, walks through a wooded valley, and a kitchen garden oddly sited on the N-facing slope separate of the opposite valley side.

CSB OCT 2000 following private visit.

3. This garden is depicted on the Second Edition Ordnance Survey 25-inch map of Cardiganshire XXXI, sheet 3 (1905). Its main elements on that map include lawns, possible quadrangular enclosure, relict hedgelines, greenhouse, possible covert, possible summerhouse and walled garden.
C.S.Briggs 27.09.05

Sources:

Cadw 2002: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire, 146-8 (ref: PGW(Dy)41(CER)).

Ordnance Survey first edition six-inch map: sheet Cardiganshire XXXI.NE (1887).

Additional notes: C.S.Briggs

RCAHMW, 23 October 2020