PENLLERGARE VALLEY WOODS
Article by Hal Moggridge
Photo by Matthew Daniels on Unsplash
Outside Swansea, a city on the coast of South Wales in the British Isles, is a picturesque valley park, described as ‘a Victorian Paradise’. This long forgotten estate, formerly the family home and the creation of John Dillwyn Llewelyn between 1832 and about 1865, fell into neglected disrepair during the 20th century. However since 2000 extensive repairs and renovation have been carried out, continuing still, and Penllergare Valley Woods has become a popular recreation ground for a modern population, looked after by volunteers.
John Dillwyn Llewelyn’s grandfather, William Dillwyn, one of the founders in 1787 of the ‘Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade’, was a successful businessman who had immigrated to London from Philadelphia in the eastern states of America. William Dillwyn purchased Swansea Pottery for his 24 year old son Lewis Weston Dillwyn to manage, and in consequence the latter moved to Swansea. There he married Mary Adams, the illegitimate daughter of the landowner Colonel John Llewelyn, through whom Penllergare was inherited; they had four children surviving to adulthood. Enriched by this unconventional but wealthy background, John Dillwyn Llewelyn was able to lead a creative and inventive life which he based around the landscape which he created for Penllergare where he and his wife, Emma Thomasina Talbot, lived with their two sons and four daughters.
The upper length of the Drive, looking north towards the mansion. Photograph by John Dillwyn Llewelyn, mid 1850s.
He started creating the landscape in 1833, at the same time as he married, with the one and a half mile long romantic driveway which rises slowly from the south up the western valley side to their hilltop mansion. Towards the top the drive hangs on the valley side, cliffs cut in on the left and a high retaining wall beneath the right hand side of the drive. Stone for all his subsequent landscape construction work came from a quarry on the left of the drive which crosses a bridge below which stone was passed by tramway to the valley below. The most dramatic surviving landscape work was the creation of a triple artificial waterfall, 18 feet (5.5m) high, between horizontal slabs of rock, holding upstream the long Upper Lake along the floor of the precipitous valley of the river Llan. Steep flights of steps and curling paths connect the mansion above with the lake on the valley floor. The valley side was ornamented with exotic trees amongst native oaks and enriched with a large collection of rhododendrons and other shrubs. Downstream of this dramatic valley there is a gentler landscape on either side of the river, where originally there was another larger lake and long paths upwards to fine viewpoints. In 1910 The South Wales Daily News wrote of this landscape “For beauty and scenery there is nothing in the whole of Morgannwg to excel Penllergare”.
This landscape provided a context for all sorts of scientific experiment. In 1848 the British Association for the Advancement of Science during a visit to Swansea was invited to Penllergare for a display of an electric boat on the Upper Lake. “The large body of visitors who witnessed the ingenious contrivance expressed the greatest satisfaction at the result of the trial of electro-motive power” wrote the Cambrian. The grounds were full of unusual plants gathered from many parts of the world. In the walled kitchen garden a small pioneering orchid house was built, the first in Britain with a special microclimate to support tropical orchids, created by a heated waterfall falling over rockwork into a pool. In 1846 this small building was illustrated in detail in volume 1 of the Journal of the Horticultural Society (today’s Royal Horticultural Society). But the most striking of all these inventive activities was photography, a technique only just discovered at the time. As well as pictures of family members who had to keep still for the lengthy process, the landscape of Penllergare was painstakingly recorded with considerable artistic sensibility. Individual plants were also photographed showing detail of foliage and texture. John Dillwyn Llewelyn took numerous photographs experimenting with new techniques, and his sister Mary and elder daughter Thereza were also keen photographers, the latter experimenting with stereoscopic images. It was she who with her father achieved the first photograph of the moon in about 1857 from the private observatory which he had built. They moved a specially made telescope-camera together following the moon’s trajectory for long enough to obtain an image on the slowly responding glass plate.
THE SUMMER EVENING. The northern end of the Upper Lake, looking south, 25th August 1854. Collodion image by John Dillwyn Llewelyn.
In the early 20th century the family moved away from Penllergare to another property and the place gradually declined. In 1961 the house was demolished. The park became a dump, infested with invasive vegetation and abandoned cars. New houses were built round about but the park was considered too unsafe for access by any but the boldest.
In the 1990s The Friends of Penllergare were set up to try to protect the site. Then in 1999 Richard Morris published a book, Penllergare a Victorian Paradise, stimulated in the first place from a professional interest in the historic photography, but describing all aspects of what the place had once been like. Meanwhile Michael Norman, a retired soldier living nearby with a passionate interest in historic parkland, and his artistic wife Jennie Eyers, decided that the landscape of Penllergare Valley Woods deserved to be restored, to become a historic landscape available for enjoyment by today’s diverse population. John Dillwyn Llewelyn’s photographs showed what had been there a hundred and fifty years before. The waterfall survived but the lake above it had silted up and was gradually turning into secondary woodland. The flights of steps shown on the photographs were nowhere to be seen. The photographed old stone bridge downstream of the waterfall was now only a sewer pipe spanning the river. The gentler landscape downstream was still accessible to the bold but had few features other than the river to attract interest.
In giving permission for houses to be built adjacent to this former parkland the local planning authority had nominated it as a ‘country park’ but had made no effective provision for realisation of this designation. In 2000 Ymddiriedolaeth Penllergare, the Penllergare Trust, was formed, a charitable not-for-profit limited company with Michael Norman as company secretary and executive manager, to attempt to carry out the dreamed-of restoration. The Trust had three purposes, in order of priority:
The protection, conservation, restoration and maintenance of the landscape.
Promoting knowledge and appreciation of Penllergare.
Protection and conservation of wildlife.
I was approached to chair this Trust, as a landscape architect and also a descendant of John Dillwyn Llewelyn’s elder sister, and so considered suitable for the task. The Trust had no legal interest in the property or statutory right to do anything there, but no-one objected to its activities.
For its first five years the Trust built up support for its aspirations and planned ways of clearing away the derelict cars and rubbish with which the place was infested. The local press published regular articles about Penllergare and there was mention on television. The interest of local politicians was aroused. Jennie Eyers started educational visits for local schoolchildren, and also started the production of elegantly designed documents about the landscape, making use of historic and new photographs. In 2006 a charming book of articles of memories, Echoes from Valley Woods, was published. Community development was a key activity with guided walks for adults and illustrated talks to various societies, usually one a month. Assisted by grants a website, surveys and a database about the site was set up. Thus knowledge and public interest were accumulated. Nonetheless in February 2005 a report by Anthony Jellard Associates concluded that “Penllergare’s appearance is one of continued slow decline, exacerbated by the failure to carry out basic (management). …..its appeal is greatly reduced by the effects of anti-social behaviour, theft and criminal damage and an unsafe atmosphere.”
In response in 2006, still without any rights of tenure, the Trust decided to start intensive restoration. Michael Norman’s gift for raising money enabled the Trust to undertake access and forestry works. A new 6km network of way-marked walks was created, coupled with a Walks leaflet and measures to exclude motor bikes. To provide access to both sides of the river Llan a new steel bridge was installed as a practical training exercise by the 108 Welsh Field Squadron (since known as Sapper Bridge), and a wooden footbridge was built nearby, based on the old photographs. This enabled the public at large to explore and enjoy the river and woods. Volunteer wardens and guides kept the site feeling safe to use.
Community engagement and education and visits by politicians continued. Valley Woods, still lacking much of its original subtlety, had thus become a park for the people. This was symbolised in October 2008 when Rhodri Morgan, the First Minister of Wales, accompanied by Edwina Hart local Assembly member and longtime supporter, visited Valley Woods and learnt from local people of the importance of Valley Woods to them. He heard from 11 year old pupils of the local Penllergaer Primary School what they enjoyed doing in Valley Woods and what further improvements they would like.
There were now more trustees, a quarterly illustrated information sheet Pen-Friends, woodsmen Dai Whitelock with Graham and Kyle Dicks, and a supporting society with 172 members, Friends of Penllergare. Jennie Eyers was head of educational activities with a modest salary and a project manager was appointed. The growing contributions of volunteers, 7,300 hours in 2011, was becoming a key element in the Trust’s financial strategy. And so in 2009 an application for a large restoration grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund was applied for, the landscape design being carried out by Simon Bonvoisin from the Tiverton office of Nicholas Pearson . In mid 2011 an HLF grant of £2.3million was awarded, some 75% of the cost of the phase 1 restoration project. During the next three years the work was carried out, with Philip James as director of the work and Simon Bonvoisin continuing as landscape consultant. It was only at the very last moment that the Penllergare Trust was able to obtain tenure of Valley Woods, a condition preceding the grant being able to be accepted, and even then under unfavourable terms from the landowners, although they are prosperous descendants of John Dillwyn Llewelyn.
The Upper Lake, winter morning in 2016, looking south. Photograph by Carey Beor from the 2017 Penllergare Valley Woods calender.
Thus parts of the romantic 19th century landscape have been restored. The most striking feature is the Upper Lake now again a shimmering stretch of water above the sound of the waterfall, all the silt completely dredged out. Paths and curling flights of steps from above have been rediscovered and repaired and an old mid level terrace restored. Using the artificially formed change of level at the outflow from the lake, an Archimedes screw hydro-generator has been installed inconspicuously beside the waterfall, not original but a source of income which John Dillwyn Llewelyn might have approved of. A little further down the river the stone bridge has been rebuilt on its original site, using historic building techniques. At high level there is now a neat car park and a little pavilion with toilets where delicious teas are served by volunteers. The old Observatory has been repaired in its detached location. Trees and shrubs are now orderly in the upper part of Valley Woods, paths criss-cross both sides of the valley , numerous visitors come every day all through the year to enjoy the public park which has evolved from this once private paradise landscape. As stated in the 2017 Penllergare Valley Woods calender: “It’s a real fairytail. A South Wales landscape garden that’s been slumbering under overgrown trees and shrubs for nearly 100 years is being gently woken by local volunteers.”
