Buckland Hall, an eighteenth-century house modified in the nineteenth century (nprn 25183) but located on a more ancient site, is situated to the east of Talybont-on-Usk, on the west side of Buckland Hill overlooking the Usk valley. It lies within parkland (700092), but it is primarily noted for the structure of its grand Edwardian formal garden in a fine valley location.
Until recently the garden was at the centre of an extensive country estate identified historically with the Games family, conveyed to the Gwynne family in 1756, before passing to the Holfords of Cilgwyn, Carmarthenshire in the nineteenth century. The noted designer H. Avray Tipping was involved in local landscape design.
The south front of the house looks out on to the terraced formal gardens, a series of terraces which descend the hillside to the west; they may lie on a fifteenth-century layout. The garden structure is unchanged, only augmented through later planting. From the south-east corner a wide, raised grass terrace runs south bordered on its east side by banks of mature rhododendrons at the lower woodland edge of Buckland Hill. From this terrace an ornamental, Italianate stone stair ascends the hillside leading to walks in the lower woodland. On the west is a lower lawn. Towards its southern end two separate, ornamental flights of steps connect the terrace with a wide, curving lawn about 2m below known as the 'Archery Lawn'. Below this on the west is a terrace of three square, interconnecting garden enclosures, the central one with a sunken centre suggesting a pool. The flanking enclosures contain mature ornamental conifers. All are surrounded by yew hedges with signs of earlier topiary work. To the immediate south is an overgrown maze and nearby another square, formal, enclosure divided by paths. Just below these gardens a network of overgrown paths leads through a small arboretum. The southern area of the garden could have been a 'wild garden'. Within it are overgrown paths connecting to the remains of a classical, curved seat set in an overgrown yew arbour, and to the remains of a collapsed building, possibly once a summer house; both are possibly later additions.
Major Gwynne Holford, a veteran of Waterloo, celebrated the British victory by planting, on the south front lawn, four topiary trees within a yew enclosure, representing a battle formation and about 10m to the south four Irish yews in a block around a statue of the Duke of Wellington, representing the battle command. The planted features, apart from the hedge, survive but the statue has gone.
About 300m north-west of the house is a fishpond surrounded by trees and where there was once a boathouse, and to its west a belt of mixed woodland. There is an area of wild planting along a small stream to the west of Buckland Farm, below Sunnybank smallholding. North of the stables is a tennis pavilion designed by Tipping who had interests 'wild' area design.
Towards the north end of the park is the former kitchen garden (700093).
Source:
Cadw 1999: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Powys, 36-9 (ref: PGW (Po)6(POW)).
RCAHMW, 19 April 2022