Hartsheath, a nineteenth-century house on an earlier site (nprn 35876), is located in the Alun valley near Leeswood, to the south-east of Mold. It is notable for its small nineteenth-century park (700119) together with a terraced and informal pleasure garden which survive in their entirety (266500).

The garden lies mostly south of the house, sloping down to the river Alyn. Most of the garden is thought to date from the nineteenth century, with twentieth-century overlays, particularly of planting. The pleasure garden falls into two areas. The first, immediately next to the house, on its south-east, is a lawn with perimeter shrub planting and a 1920s double herbaceous border centred off the main axis of the house, the borders aligned on the middle window of the dining-room. These replace the Victorian parterres still visible as parch-marks in the lawn. This area also includes a small rectangular pre-war formal garden with paved perimeter and cross paths on the south side of the house. It is bounded by a stone wall on the north side. The north-west extension of this wall, which bounds the north-east side of the forecourt, has two ice-tunnels built into its base.

In the second area, the land drops sharply away from the lawn south-westwards to an informal woodland garden which slopes down to a level area of wild garden. The steep slope is scarped into a series of narrow terraces, and paths run across the slope from the upper to the lower parts. The wild garden, in the valley bottom, is planted with mixed trees, shrubs, and bamboos, and features two elongated rectangular former ponds, now silted up, parallel with the river which bounds the garden.

A third garden area is the kitchen garden located to the east of the pleasure garden (700120).

Sources:
Cadw 1995: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Clwyd, 124-6 (ref: PGW(C)52(FL)).
Ordnance Survey first edition 25-inch maps, sheets: Flintshire XIV.14; XVII.2 (1872).
RCAHMW air photos: CS 1547-8; 945166/62-4.

RCAHMW, 28 April 2022

Site Record

Hartsheath Pleasure Garden, Leeswood