Fairy Hill, an eighteenth-century gentry house (nprn 18637), is located to the north-west of the village of Reynoldston. It lies within a small landscape park and is surrounded by gardens (700201; 265673). Walled kitchen gardens, former glasshouses and a relict orchard lie to the north of the house and service court.

The kitchen garden comprises three conjoining compartments of unequal size. The southernmost two adjoin the service court. The larger is on the west, its rubble stone walls up to 3.5m high. A path from the garden leads to a wide opening in the south wall. The interior, sloping north and west, is mostly grassed over with a flowerbed against the east wall and a log shed against the south. There is a gap at the south end of the east wall. The smaller second compartment, also with stone walls, conjoins at the north end of the east wall of the first, and is now the private garden to 'The Stables'.
The third, rectangular, compartment is the smallest and lies to the north of the second. Its north wall rises to 3.5m high with a lean-to stone bothy built against it. The east and north walls are brick on a stone base. An entrance in the west wall is now blocked with brick. The south wall is of stone, about 2.5m high, with doorways at each end; it continues west to form the north wall of the first compartment.

To the north of the walled garden is a grass area, with a wide entrance to the lane on the east. To its north a complex of ruined stone buildings is all that remains of extensive glasshouses, with a sunken 'basement' which probably housed the boiler. Further north is an open grass area with a few old fruit trees, the remains of an orchard.

Sources:
Cadw 2000: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Glamorgan, 224-7 (ref: PGW(Gm)28(CDF)).
Ordnance Survey First Edition six-inch map, sheet: Glamorgan XXII (1878); second-edition 25-inch maps, sheets: Glamorgan XXII.9 & 13.

RCAHMW, 24 May 2022

Site Record

Fairyhill Kitchen Garden, Gower