Llanfihangel Court, a seventeenth-century house on a more ancient site (nprn 542), is located to the south-east of Llanvihangel Crucorney, about 6km north of Abergavenny. It is notable for the good-quality, and rare survival in its entirety, of its well-built seventeenth-century garden terracing and steps, with contemporary pavilion (43272) and avenue of sweet chestnuts.

Llanfihangel Court retains in outline plan its late seventeenth-century formal garden, the remains of a late seventeenth-century formally laid out park, an early twentieth-century conifer plantation and has an eighteenth-century walled kitchen garden.
John Arnold remodelled the house after 1665, laying out the terraces and planting avenues. It is likely that the large quadrangular shape of the garden, together with its corner `towers probably intended as gazebos) as seen in a later bird's eve view of the site ' was laid out at this time, and that its defensive style reflected the bellicose nature of the period.
Arnold may also have laid out the axial avenues in the l670s (he succeeded his father in l665). These remain a significant part of the park's identity. The northern one was of Pine (lost in 1940s), to the south was sweet chestnut. The latter is now beyond normal lifespan and much is derelict and lifeless.
The place is approached through stone, square entrance piers without finials. Mid-twentieth century they were surmounted by eagles, but these were stolen in the late `eighties.
The gardens to the north and east of the house include northern three terraces with stone revetment walls, some brickwork walls, and a wide flight of steps down the middle ending in semi-circular steps at the bottom. Although these are thought to date from the l670s, there is some structural evidence to suggest Victorian restoration or change.
The site also has a ha ha and a lake.
The 'Guardhouse', a small circular pavilion standing now isolated in grass to the south of the small stream running into the lake on the east of the site, is a two-storey building. It has an octagonal conical roof of stone slates topped with a small ball finial. The lowest part of the wall is stone with brick above, and there are several stone buttresses. The entrance door is a simple rectangular opening on the south-west side. Above it is a small window. There are two small slit windows in the lower part of the wall on the north-west and south-east sides (the latter is larger). Inside there is a stone 'bench' on the east side. This was probably one of the towers incorporated into the original rectangular enclosure wall of the site. It would be interesting to know what happened to the others.
Several stone balls now incorporated into garden fabric appear to have belonged to gates or features of the original seventeenth-century site. On the edge of the gravel forecourt on the north side is a composite stone ornament made up of a cylindrical pillar with a ball on top set on two circular steps (bottom one broken).

Two sundials survive, both of moulded pillar type (indeterminate date) and on the south wall of the house is a further sundial inscribed 'N A [Nicholas Arnold] l627'.
A pre-1822 walled kitchen garden lies south of the various outbuildings to the south of the house. In 1990 there was a ruined glasshouse against its south side. The former gardener's cottage is converted to a modern house. The walls are overgrown but intact, the interior used as a market garden and the original layout is now gone.

Sources:
Cadw 1994: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales: Gwent, 69-70 (ref: PGW (Gt)7(MON)).
Ordnance Survey 25-inch map, sheet: Monmouthshire III.16 (1881).
RCAHMW air photos: 94-CS 0559; 945074/50-1.
Additional notes: C.S.Briggs.

RCAHMW, 25 July 2022

Site Record

Llanfihangel Court Garden, Llanvihangel Crucorney