Llanaeron/Llanerchaeron Park (nprn 700355) is a small Picturesque landscape park, located in the Aeron valley between Aberaeron and Ciliau Aeron, above the south bank of the Aeron river. It occupies ow lying flat land of the valley of the river Aeron as it meanders towards Aberaeron. It was probably established in the late eighteenth century, completed by 1803, and very little of the park appears to have been altered since then.
The pleasure gardens, together with the walled gardens (31515), the drives and the lake occupy some 12 acres around Llanerchaeron House, with most of the garden area being to the east of the house. The pleasure grounds are mostly east of the house. These have a canopy of mixed coniferous and deciduous trees, including beech, cedar and wellingtonia. To the south-east of the garden, within the pleasure grounds, is the lake fed by a leat and rill which run through the park, the rill bisecting part of the pleasure garden. The lake is oval with an oval-shaped island towards its east end. There is a circuit walk around the lake and nearby are clumps of bamboo and holly. The path to the lake, which runs to the south of the walled gardens, is now indistinct and goes through an area the National Trust describes as the ‘Dutch’ gardens. The walled gardens are set within the pleasure grounds.
Sources:
Cadw 2002: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire (ref: PGW Dy51(CER)), p.124-9.
Second Edition Ordnance Survey 25-inch map, sheet: Cardiganshire XXV.1 (1905).
RCAHMW, 4 July 2022
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Llanaeron was bequeathed to the National Trust by the late Major Lewes in 1989-91. A modest gentry house of Classical pretension, the novelty of its layout of c 1800 by John Nash was estate activity planning around rectangular yards spatially balanced by two adjacent large walled kitchen gardens. Farming was partially separated from gardening by a frameyard, boiler house, potting shelters and gardeners' accommodation (Suggett 1995).
Much activity by volunteers initially resulted in restoration of the walled gardens. Later, the site of an Edwardian rose garden, formerly in the NW corner of the W Garden enclosure, was carefully excavated, deturfed, cleaned and planned. In 1996 roses were once more restored to it. Two resident archaeologists were appointed in 1992, and a full EDM survey then made of the site (Ede and Mayes 1994). They were succeeded in 1995 by Nicky Evans, who then made a thorough study of the surviving glasshouse structures in their various states of disrepair preparatory to restoration. At least one wooden greenhouse has been sensitively restored and one concrete-framed greenhouse has been de-glazed and lies derelict.
CS Briggs, c. 1995.
Llanerchaeron was at the forefront of eighteenth-century garden technology, the double kitchen garden incorporated glazed stove houses and heated walls to allow prestigious fruit, vegetables and flowers to be displayed to, and consumed by, visitors to the house. The Lewis family commissioned the fashionable John Nash to build nearby Llanerchaeron mansion, inland from Aberaeron, which sat at the heart of a working farmstead and garden. Pleasure grounds cleverly screened the working estate from visitors. (Text from the forthcoming 'Historic Wales from the Air', RCAHMW, 2012).
RCAHMW, 11 August 2006.