Gwernyfed Park house was designed by W.E.Nesfield and built by 1880 (nprn 25575), commissioned by the hereditary owners of nearby Old Gwernyfed mansion (25947). It is located to the immediate south-east of Aberllynfi/Three Cocks village, about 3.5km north-east of Talgarth. The house, now a school, is set within the former deer park associated with the old mansion (700401), the deer park becoming the landscape park of the new house; the histories of the two houses are closely intertwined.
Gwernyfed Park is notable for the survival of formal terraced gardens (also designed by Nesfield) and an integral kitchen garden with its grand ornamental gateways and an intact glasshouse (700402), together with the remains of the parkland.
The park (the former deer park) surrounds the house and covers approximately 300 acres. Park planting survives in the shelter belts and woodlands and the many scattered, isolated, trees, some possibly remnants of the seventeenth-century avenues.
The first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1888 shows the layout of the Nesfield house and gardens situated within its park. The house was approached from an entrance off the A438 to the north-west, and a lodge, also by Nesfield, was built in 1879 (25576).
The main gardens lie to the south and west of the house and were carved out of the existing deer park. The garden layout reflected the Italianate and labour-intensive style of the later Victorian period, although it may well have incorporated or remodelled existing features such as the ha-ha and some established trees. Along the south front of the house is a narrow asphalt terrace with steps descending to a lawned terrace of about 0.5 acres, bounded on the east by a steep bank planted with yew. An axial path in the north half with cross paths east and west from perimeter paths meet at a central fountain basin, now a circular flower bed. Smaller plant beds lie in the lawn either side of the axial path. The lawn is bounded on the south by a ha-ha with steps down into the park. Just inside the ha-ha is a straight tree-lined walk linked to a shrubbery to the west and which concluded at the ornamental walled kitchen garden (700402). This area has been developed with school buildings.
To the west of the terrace is a second, linear, enclosure on a north-west alignment. It is bounded on the north by a revetted bank planted with yew hedge and trees. The interior has now been largely developed for school use. This area is now bounded on the south by buildings and the wall of the kitchen garden orchard. This enclosure was originally linked to the lawned terrace by its axial cross-path which extended down the entire length of the adjoining enclosre; this path has now been truncated by school buildings.
By the later nineteenth century Garden Wood, towards the south-west corner the park, had been landscaped with rides and water features (405976); all now gone.
Sources:
Cadw 1999: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Powys, 112-6 (ref: PGW(Po)5(POW)).
C.S.Briggs & N.Lloyd 2006: ‘Old Gwernyfed: an Elizabethan Garden in History and Poetry’, Gerddi vol.4, 7-37.
Ordnance Survey six-inch map sheet, sheets: Brecknockshire XXIII.NW (editions of 1888 & 1905); second Edition 25-inch map, Brecknockshire XXIII.6 (1904).
RCAHMW, 25 August 2022