TreeAlive
‹ Cof Cymru: National Historic Assets of Wales, Wales

Cof Cymru: National Historic Assets of Wales · Wales

Grotto in Wenvoe Castle Park

Barry, Vale of Glamorgan, Wales

The record

Designation
Listed building, Grade II
Broad class
Gardens, Parks and Urban Spaces
Date of designation
21 October 2002
Locality
Wenvoe Castle Park
Community
Barry
Unitary authority
Vale of Glamorgan
Country
Wales
Coordinates
51.43086, -3.27063
Cadw reference
26997

Slide toward Today to fade the historical sheet and see the modern map underneath.

David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries

Shown on 5 historical map sheets, the earliest the 1636 "Cornubia : Devonia, Somersetus, Dorcestria, Wiltonia, Glocestria ..." (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries).

Get directions ↗

This record in Cadw's own full report ↗

Cadw's description

SW of the former castle in a tongue of woodland extending N from Bears Wood, close to the lake.

The Park at Wenvoe was largely the creation of Sir Edmund Thomas, third baronet, between 1733 when he inherited the estate and his death in 1767. The most interesting part of this mid C18 park is Bears Wood, laid out in Rococo style with intersecting rides leading to circular clearings, large at centre. In the tongue of the wood at the N end the estate map of 1762 shows a Grotto, serpentine Canal and a Green.

The grotto of stone rubble with roughly dressed quoins, partly covered by an earth mound, consists of a chamber with a rusticated roughly rendered interior, entered through segmental arches at front and back; stone vault.

Listed as a very rare example of this type of C18 park and garden architecture in Wales.

Nearby in the register

Other entries of the same register within about three miles of this one, by straight line.

Designated Historic Asset GIS Data, The Welsh Historic Environment Service (Cadw), 2026-09-07, licensed under the Open Government Licence http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/ Cadw, the Welsh Historic Environment Service · Open Government Licence v3.0
See your own family's places on a living map