Temple, Loggia and Terraces to E of Llannerch Hall including Gates and Walls to Forecourt

Cadw's description

Location

Located immediately E of Llannerch Hall.

History

Renaissance-style temple and logia with associated formal terracing; designed and laid out by Percy Cane, the garden and landscape designer, between 1927 and 1929. The terracing incorporates some elements of the 1860s garden terrace walls which continue as a low forecourt entrance screen. Of the important Renaissance terraced gardens laid out by Mutton Davies in the 1660s nothing now survives.

Exterior

Single-storey Italianate temple with adjoining L-shaped loggia; sited axially above formal paved terracing. Of rendered red brick construction with reconstituted stone detailing and hipped slate roofs. The temple has a giant Venetian-style tripartite facade with arched central opening and Tuscan columns; projecting keystones and moulded architraves. Attached to the left is a loggia of 3 bays plus 7 bays returned back to join the pecked masonry of the screen wall, with blocked windows and boarded arched doorway up steps. The loggia has arched arcades with detailing as before and plastered tunnel vaults internally; flagged sandstone floors. Red brickwork with pilasters to rear plus staircase to upper level balcony where attached to the house.

A long rectangular paved terrace with central canal (now partly with raised swimming pool) runs axially S from the stairs below the temple, balustered parapets over stone revetments, wide stone stairs up to house and down to lower gardens, radiating stone flags to pavement at S end.

Adjoining the terrace walls to the S are the forecourt walls. These form low boundary walls and become gently-battered revetments at the eastern edge of the forecourt; of snecked limestone ashlar with sandstone copings and simple iron railings to front section, with arcaded decoration. There are six dividing piers with chamfered corners and moulded sandstone capping. The central, entrance pair are surmounted by large limestone figures of heraldic lions; simple iron gate with arcaded decoration to upper section and intersecting lozenges below.

Reason for designation

Listed for its special interest as a fine early C20 garden structure sequence and for its group value with Llannerch Hall.