Llanfihangel Court, a seventeenth-century house on a more ancient site (nprn 542), is located to the south-east of Llanvihangel Crucorney and about 6km north of Abergavenny. It is notable for the rare survival and quality of its seventeenth-century garden terracing and steps (265892), with associated features. The setting for the house and garden is a small park.

The park, with axial avenues, is thought to have been laid out by John Arnold in the 1670s. A painting of about 1680 gives a good idea of the former layout. The house is in the centre, Skirrid Mountain in the background, the Honddu River on the right, and the Abergavenny-Hereford road (A465) next to it, forming the western boundary of the park. A straight drive in an avenue leads from the centre of the north front of the house to the main park entrance off the road, gates flanked by piers with ball finials. A wall east from the gate, marks the (north) boundary of the park.

The layout includes formal groves to the north-east, north-west and west of the house, with a further large wood to the east. In addition to the north avenue there are two more to the south of the house - one running south (the sweet chestnut avenue that survives) and one running diagonally off to the south-east and then bending to the east, the latter with gate piers just short of the bend. The straight drive from the village running east to the entrance at the foot of the terraces is also shown, with formal groves of trees on either side.
The rest of the park is otherwise portrayed as open grassland aside from some faintly drawn conifer plantations at the north end, to the east of the drive.

There was little alteration to the park after this date. Some landscaping took place, probably between 1796 and 1822, mainly to the east of the house, where a ha-ha was made roughly on the line of a wall of the earlier formal gardens, with a small lake made below it. This, with the removal of the walled garden here, opened up views of the park from the house. The layout at the end of the nineteenth century is shown on the first-edition Ordnance Survey map.

The principal features of the park were the avenues to the north (pine) and south (sweet chestnut) of the house. The north avenue survived until the 1940s, said not to have been Scots pine but a less common variety. It has recently been replanted. The carriage drive accompanying it had already gone when the park was mapped in 1822. The south avenue survives, as does the grove of sweet chestnut trees to the west of its north end, but the trees are now coming to the end of their lives, and some are already dead. The avenues to the south-east have gone. The park today consists largely of pasture, orchard and isolated deciduous trees, mainly oak.

Source:
Cadw 1994: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales: Gwent, 69-70 (ref: PGW(Gt)7(MON)).

RCAHMW, 1 August 2022

Site Record

Llanfihangel Court Park, Llanfihangel Crucorney