Main Entrance to Vaynol Park, including flanking approach walls,

Cadw's description

Location

The grand gated entrance to the main drive is flanked by similarly designed stretches of broadly curved boundary walls, contiguous with the boundary walls to the Park. The Grand Lodge lies directly behind the W side of the gates.

History

The Agents Account Books for the 1860's and 1870's have numerous references to 'expenditure on Vaynol [or "Park"] wall'. The 1st edition OS map, surveyed in 1888, shows what appears to be this entrance, although the more Edwardian style suggests later enrichment.

Exterior

Of rock-faced snecked rubble with freestone dressings. The tripartite main entrance is in a free Indian style, with tapered pilasters and flat pyramidal finials, and bracketed cornice, repeated on piers on the flanking walls. Segmental arch to the main carriageway, and flanking semi-circular headed pedestrian arches, all with voussoirs. Iron gates with scrollwork below the lock rail. Further 'bays' to either side, each with a semi-circular headed and iron barred aperture.

The boundary walls that adjoin at right angles, gently stepped downwards, are in a similar manner to the main entrance and form a pair of deep quadrants, each of 8 bays and more finely detailed than the main wall. Battered walls and plinth and channelled freestone pilasters, coping and finials; distinctive voussoired straight-sided oval apertures, similarly iron-barred, to each bay. On the SW side, close to the main entrance, one bay is opened between piers leading to the drive to Wern-y-Gogas.

Reason for designation

Listed as an impressive park entrance, of group value with the Park Boundary Wall and Grand Lodge.