Nantclwyd House, a sixteenth-century building with later alterations (nprn 27555), is located at no.10 Castle Street, Ruthin. Its garden is enclosed with late medieval rubble stone walls and incorporates an early eighteenth-century gazebo.

The garden occupies an L-shaped area behind the house. To the rear of the house the garden is bounded on all sides by high stone walls, probably of fifteenth-century date although some parts may be earlier (27556). The house was lived in as a private home until c.1985 and so the garden has undergone much change over the centuries. Any medieval or seventeenth to eighteenth-century layout has gone. The inner garden is mostly occupied by a lawn, with long borders flanking the walls and a perimeter path around the lawn. A low stone wall with a gap in the middle divides the inner and outer (west) parts of the garden.

A two-storey gazebo (23051) is situated in the northwest corner of the garden, between the inner and outer parts, and is probably of early eighteenth-century date. It was in place when the Buck brothers made their drawing of the south-west view of Ruthin Castle in 1742, where it is shown in the background. From the garden, and particularly from the gazebo, there are fine views to the north over the town and to the north-west and west over the Clwyd valley.

To the west is the outer garden, the former Lord’s Garden. It is enclosed by walls dating to the fifteenth-century though, again, some parts may be earlier (27556). The north wall joins the gazebo at the northeast corner of the garden. Below the southern end of the garden is a narrow lane (Coney Green now Cunning Green) beyond which are the grounds of Ruthin Castle. During the medieval period the Lord’s Garden was the kitchen garden to Ruthin Castle. In the sixteenth-century the garden was leased to the owner of Nantclwyd House and was purchased outright in 1691 by the then owner Eubule Thelwall. The 1874 Ordnance Survey map shows the area laid out with cross and perimeter paths. The path layout has been recently reinstated as part of a Heritage Lottery Funded project to restore the garden

Sources:
Cadw 1995: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Clwyd (ref: PGW(C)53).
Ordnance Survey second-edition 25-inch map, sheet: Denbighshire XIX.7 (editions of 1873 & 1900).

RCAHMW, 5 July 2022

Site Record

Nantclwyd House Garden, Ruthin