Benarth Hall ( including balustraded terrace to SE )

Cadw's description

Location

Strikingly sited within its own wooded grounds facing SE across the Conwy estuary, and approximately 1.5 km SE of Conwy bridge and castle; situated at the end of Benarth road.

Exterior

History: Late Georgian country house, probably built for Samuel Price of Lincoln's Inn, c.1790. Sold by his executors on 26th June 1805, together with its 135 acre estate and farm. The sale particulars describe the house as 'An elegant, commodious and modern built mansion house, suitable for a large family and with every description of offices'. Included were the 'beautiful pleasure grounds laid out with great taste and enriched with forest trees and the choicest evergreens', as well as a 'hot house, green house, pinery, melon pit and peachery, and ice house'. In the early C19 Benarth was a summer retreat for the connoisseur and collector Sir George Beaumont and a design by John Nash dated 1802 may relate to Benarth or its neighbour.

Exterior: 3 storey double-pile house with flanking single-storey double pavilions. Red brick construction with roughcast render and hipped slate roofs; oversailing eaves. Symmetrical 7 window SE (garden ) front, with a central, advanced bay, flanked by full-height canted bay windows; elegant 12-pane recessed windows with 6-pane windows to upper floor; projecting stone cills. Open pediment in moulded timber to central bay with c.1900 flagpole; plain flanking pilasters. c.1900 partly-glazed, bowed colonnade to ground floor central bay with reconstituted stone Doric columns supporting a flat roof with balustrade; French doors to centre of ground and first floors. Near-symmetrical entrance front with single-storey porch of reconstituted stone, c.1900. Moulded entablature and square opening with flanking Doric columns; part-glazed contemporary door within. Above this a large Diocletian window with tripartite glazing. 12-pane windows to ground and first floors and 6-pane windows to third floor, as before.

Attached to either side of the main block are contemporary, single-storey pavilions, pedimented as before and connected to the main block via 2-bay, single-storey linking ranges. Both pavilions project, though that to the SE is further advanced. Adjoining these to the rear are further single-storey pavilions, of circular plan and originally with lead domes and surmounting lanterns (that to the SW collapsed and that to the NE partly fallen at the time of inspection, September 1995). These pavilions, flanking the entrance front, formed the kitchen and music room respectively, the latter `expensively finished' according to the sale particulars.

The interior was not evaluated during the survey but is recorded as having good contemporary sunk-panelled doors and mantelpieces, and a repositioned staircase.

6

Opposite the garden facade (to the NE), and terminating the upper garden terrace in the centre,
a convex balustraded viewing platform of c.1900; conventional balusters and square dividing pilasters of reconstituted stone on a rubble plinth.

An elegant and imposing Georgian house with good facades and pavilion arrangements.

The building was found to be unoccupied and in a state of disrepair at the time of survey (September 1995).

References: County Record Office, Caernarvon.
R Suggett, John Nash, (RCAHM/NLW, 1995), p123.