Pontypool Park occupies an area of steeply undulating ground to the north of the centre of Pontypool. It is an early nineteenth century landscaped park with modern additions. The park lies on land originally purchased by Capel Hanbury (ironmaster) in 1677 and 1689. The park remained more or less in its natural state of open grassland and deciduous woodland until the improvements of Capel Hanbury Leigh (1776-1861) at the beginning of the nineteenth century which developed into the present park in 1800-10, sweeping away earlier gardens and other landscaped features. Aside from a section in the middle on which the Penygarn housing estate is built, the park remains intact, although the southern half has been heavily utilised in the twentieth century for modern leisure facilities (leisure centre, rugby ground, ski- slope, recreation ground, bandstand, Italian Gardens). The park passed into public ownership in 1921. The Hanbury family residence, now a school, lies on the western margins of the present park (nprn 54058).

The main entrance to the park is at the Pontymoel Gates, iron gates built in the 1720s, remodelled and re-erected in 1835 in the south-east corner of the park (32879). An outstanding and well-preserved nineteenth century shell hermitage, which is thought to be the most important grotto in Wales, lies on the ridge on the east side (23105). The Nant y Gollen stream runs through the park and is dammed (in 1975) to form two small lakes which replaced the single one created in the early 1800s. In the second half of the eighteenth century, Capel Hanbury built a folly on the ridge top to the north of the park. This was rebuilt as a hexagonal castellated tower in 1837, demolished in 1940 (407295), then rebuilt in the 1990s.

Situated on the ridge-top near the east boundary of the park is the shell hermitage/grotto (23105) which was built in the 1830s, restored in 1996, and is believed to have been the inspiration of Molly Mackworth, Capel Hanbury Leigh’s wife; from the ridge-top there are panoramic views, and was used by the Hanbury family for picnics. North of the shell hermitage is a small cottage, Pen y Parc, formerly a gamekeeper’s cottage. Other features of the park include a unique early nineteenth century double-chambered ice-house built into the slope north-west of the house (405529); and a large kitchen garden to the north of the house present by the 1880s (700354).

North of Penygarn there is a large mid-nineteenth century arboretum (American Gardens), which includes early plantings of American conifers dispersed throughout a mainly deciduous woodland. Plantings include Sequoia, Wellingtonia and Monkey Puzzles. At the north end of the woodland is a nineteenth-century Rustic Lodge, a cottage ornée, originally the woodkeeper's cottage (20766).

The last Hanbury to live here, John Hanbury (d.1921), made the 'Italian Gardens' to the south of the Afon Lwyd, formal gardens planted with exotic plants, and have since been 'municipalised'. 

Sources:
Cadw 1994: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Gwent, 126-8 (ref: PGW(Gt)26.
Ordnance Survey second edition 25-inch map: sheet Monmouthshire XXIII.3 (1901).

RCAHMW, 1 July 2022