Castell Malgwyn (nprn 21729), with its garden and grounds, lies within parkland on the south side of the river Teifi (see 700183-5; 265251). In addition to the garden and pleasure grounds around and to the south of the house, there was another, quite separate, ornamental garden to the west of Castle Malgwyn Model Farm (406549), about 1.5km to the south-east of the house. This garden was created in the 1840s and is formed around the former kitchen garden (700186).
The garden is an irregular rectangle, long axis east by west. It is now a pasture field with a few deciduous trees near its south side and oaks along the south boundary. From the west end the ground slopes down to a gently rolling area and then rises gently towards the east end. The west end of the area, at the foot of the slope, is marked by a fountain at the centre of a circular pool. To the west is the west boundary wall of the garden, a now ruinous wall up to 2m high, reduced to banking on the south. The north boundary here is the wall of the kitchen garden. The interior layout of perimeter and cross paths ornamented with trees has largely gone.
The east end of the garden is levelled with a scarp on its south side. It is bounded on the north by a 3.5m high wall, the back wall of a range of glasshouses, now gone. A small, sunken, circular pool, now dry, lies close to this. This once lay at the intersection of cross paths linking a circular path radiating south from the glasshouses. Aside from the pool, all this has gone.
Towards the east end of the wall is a door with a brick chimney over it. On the north side of the wall is a range of single-storey stone bothies, now in agricultural use. At the east end of the area is Gardens Cottage.
North of the kitchen garden a small belt of woodland survives around the head of a stream valley.
Sources:
Cadw 2002: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire, 172-8 (ref: PGW(Dy)32(PEM)).
Ordnance Survey first-edition 25-inch map, sheet Cardiganshire XXXVIII.10 (1886).
Additional notes: D.K.Leighton.
RCAHMW, 20 May 2022