Bedwellty House, a classical-style building (nprn 36445), is located on the south side of Tredegar and is surrounded by a well-preserved example of an early nineteenth-century landscape park with interesting contemporary features. The park has historical associations with the ironmaster Samuel Homfray, who built the existing house, and his son also Samuel who further developed the house and park. In the second half of the nineteenth-century the property passed to the Morgans of Tredegar Park and in 1901 they gave the house and park to the people of Tredegar to be used for public recreation.

The park covers a roughly oval area of about 10.5ha on ground sloping down from the north-west to the south-east at the south end of the centre of Tredegar. The basic structure, most of the built features, and some tree planting from the early nineteenth-century park survives. Two curving drives approached the house from the north and west, each with a lodge (west lodge demolished in 1987; 36446). The area around and to the east of the house, between the two entrances, was planted with ornamental trees with an under-planting of shrubs, the west boundary was given a screening belt of deciduous trees. The southern end of the park is landscaped with specimen coniferous and deciduous trees, most of which were planted in the twentieth-century. Clumps of beeches in this area, however, date from the early nineteenth century. To the west of the house the series of five ponds were made, four of them one above the other, linked by narrow rockwork channels, and surrounded by rockwork and with dense planting of coniferous and deciduous trees and rhododendrons on their south and east sides. Both the planting and ponds are shown on the 1839 tithe map. Water for the ponds and fountain was brought from two ponds on the ridge to the south-west of the park, via a drain from the lower pond.

Other features include an unusual and well-preserved ice-house (43187), bandstand (301633), terraces and blocks of coal, 15 ton and 2.03 ton, the smaller intended to form a monument at the 1851 Great Exhibition (32859).

West of the house are garden features including a walled garden (700377).

Sources:
Cadw 1994: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales: Gwent, 13-14 (ref: PGW (Gt)39).
Additional notes: D.K.Leighton.

RCAHMW, 19 July 2022