Leighton Hall is a grand mid Victorian house (nprn 29432) with contemporary garden of exceptional historic interest by the well known garden designer Edward Kemp. The estate (85833) was run as a model farm by John Naylor and has an exceptional collection of Victorian agricultural buildings (80542). There are woodlands of high arboricultural interest, especially the Charles Ackers Grove and Naylor pinetum. The Leyland cypress was bred at Leighton.

The gardens lie to the north, east and south of the house and cover about 6 acres. They were laid out from about 1850 by Edward Kemp, a pupil of Sir Joseph Paxton, and were designed at considerable expense to include 'set-pieces' with pools and sculpture (23113), linked together by the raised walkways (23111) and bridges (23112). The gardens included a rose garden (the later 'Library Garden'), a geometric garden (the east terraces) and more informal gardens around the lake, with arbour and cascade). The gardens were complete by about 1870 and remained virtually unaltered until about 1930, partly due to the longevity of John Naylor's widow who lived on at Leighton for twenty years, following his death in 1889.

Outside the garden, Naylor ornamented parts of the wider estate, particularly on the Long Mountain to the east, as ‘pleasure grounds’. These were reached by an extensive system of tracks. The main features of interest to remain are the cascades and ponds in the valley to the east of Park House, the conifer groves and the Poultry House to the south-east of the Hall. A funicular railway (85842-6) to a summer house at the top of the ridge, in place by 1870, has gone.

Sources:
Cadw 1999: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Powys, (ref: PGW (Po)34(POW)).
Ordnance Survey six-inch map sheet: Montgomeryshire XXIII.SE (1885).

RCAHMW, 10 July 2022

Site Record

Leighton Hall Garden, Welshpool