Capt. Timothy Edwards R.N. (1731?80) began an ambitious garden and landscape plan at Nanhoron before the present house was constructed in 1803, partly derived from study of Philip Miller's Gardeners? Dictionary of 1763; a datestone for 1756 by the early site implies that his uncle Richard Edwards started before this with the stone-walled kitchen garden. Timothy Edwards's landscaping was confined to the curving wooded western flank of the Horon valley, the wider view to the south becoming part of the estate only later.

A survey of 1777?8 records two walled gardens, the first built of stone lined with orange brick, the second of purple brick, with a cobbled road between; their corners were made rounded in the 1830s. The second garden is now laid out in an amalgam of twentieth and twenty-first century styles. The arm of woodland, with its contour paths 5 ft (1.5 metres) wide, as recommended in the Gardeners? Dictionary, contains a small tufa grotto. It reaches round a `lawn? which was to have a piece of `water?, to end in a somewhat picturesque site for a new house, permitting the park `to be seen from the parlour window?.

Source: Haslam, Orbach and Voelcker (2009), The Buildings of Wales: Gwynedd. Pevsner Architectural Guide, page 471.

RCAHMW, October 2009