Aviaries at Aberglasney

Cadw's description

Location

On the S side of the house.

History

Aberglasney was built by Bishop Rudd of St Davids from 1600 and was one of the largest houses in Carmarthenshire according to the hearth-tax assessment of 1670. It was sold in 1710 to Robert Dyer, who rebuilt and extended the house in the general form in which it now survives. It has been argued that the general layout of the gardens was the work of the Rudd family in the C17. Further major development was undertaken in the early C19, after the purchase by the Philipps family, which included the construction of coach houses and farm buildings around a courtyard NW of the house.

The aviaries were built c1880-6 to house ornamental pheasants, a fashionable adjunct to late Victorian country houses, and are shown on the 1887 Ordnance Survey.

Exterior

A row of 6 aviaries, comprising shelters in buff-coloured brick with monopitched slate roofs (in poor condition at the N end and missing on the 2 shelters at the S end), with flight cages to the front enclosed by dwarf walls. Each shelter has a segmental-headed doorway on the R side (the doors are missing), above the level of which are openings in the brickwork in cruciform patterns. The flight cages have coped dwarf walls (designed to separate and control the aggressive nature of cock pheasants) with central gateways (gates are missing) and iron arches to the cages, although they no longer retain their original iron meshes.

Reason for designation

Listed, notwithstanding present condition, as an integral component of one of the most important historic gardens in S Wales.