Penrice Castle mansion (nprn 19670) is located within parkland in south Gower (700166). The walled garden is located at the far south-east end of the park on south-facing ground, close to the Oxwich road on the east, trhe pleasure grounds conjoining on the west (700167). The garden was created at the same time as the park was laid out, 1770s-1782.

It is broadly rectangular on plan, long axis north by south, and is divided into four unequal compartments, in total exceeding 2.5 acres, narrowing on the north. The northernmost bay is D-shaped, its north wall curved, and is narrower than the adjacent bay. Walls are about 4m high, of stone internally brick lined. The overgrown interior is now featureless. On the north side of the cross wall are buildings is a range of bothies and the head gardener’s office. At its west end a doorway leads into the pleasure garden.

The second compartment (from the top), walls up to 4m high, contains all the glasshouses, which are ranged along the north wall and in front of it. These include a large former (heated) vinery, and two smaller restored examples. Most of the area is sloping, currently under cultivation, made as a market garden in the 1970s. Against the north end of the west wall are the footings of the conservatory removed from the south front of the house to here in 1925. To the west is the conjoining former frameyard, a small area with a curving stone wall around its west side. It contains a ruined boilerhouse that heated the former conservatory, and rows of brick cold frames, their walls about 1.5m high.

The third compartment lies below the cross wall about 3.5m high. The remains of whitewash and wiring indicate that this was a glazed peach wall dismantled in about 1950. The west wall, like the east wall, is stepped down the slope and has a wide opening in it. The south wall is about 3m high with a door in the rounded south-east corner. The interior is grassed and used as an orchard with a row of hazel trees planted in the late twentieth century. Doors in the north and south walls are connected by a concrete path.

The southernmost bay is enclosed by brick walls about 3.5m-4m high on all but the south side which is a revetment wall about 1.3m high. The interior is laid out to grass with a few trees. At its east end is the former head gardener’s house (Garden House).

Sources:
Cadw 2000: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales: Additional and Revised Entries, 54-63 (ref: PGW(Gm)68(SWA)).
Ordnance Survey First Edition six-inch map, sheet: Glamorgan XXXI (1878).

RCAHMW, 17 May 2022

Site Record

Penrice Castle Walled Garden, Gower