Llanarth Court is a late-18th-century country house with substantial 19th-century alterations in Llanarth,

Monmouthshire Monmouthshire ( ; ) is a Principal areas of Wales, county in the South East Wales, south east of Wales. It borders Powys to the north; the English counties of Herefordshire and Gloucestershire to the north and east; the Severn Estuary to the s ...

, Wales. The court was built for the Jones family of

Treowen Treowen (or Tre-owen) is an early 17th-century house in Monmouthshire, Wales, regarded as "the most important gentry house (of its date) in the county". It is located in open countryside within the parish of Wonastow, about ½ mile (1 km) no ...

and was subsequently the home of

Ivor Herbert, 1st Baron Treowen Major-General Ivor John Caradoc Herbert, 1st Baron Treowen, CB, CMG, KStJ (15 July 1851 – 18 October 1933), known as Sir Ivor Herbert, Bt, between 1907 and 1917, was a British Liberal politician and British Army officer in the Grenadier Gua ...

, whose family still owns much of the Llanarth estate, although not the court itself. The court is a

Grade II* listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

and is now a private hospital. The gardens are included on the

Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales The Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales is a heritage register of significant historic parks and gardens in Wales. It is maintained by Cadw, the historic environment service of the Welsh Government and ...

History

The first house recorded on the property goes back to the early medieval period and was called Hendre obaith, ''Home of the Old Faith''. It came into the possession of ancestors of the Jones family well before 1469. In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, it was the home of Philip Jones, merchant and member of parliament for

Monmouth Boroughs Monmouth Boroughs (also known as the Monmouth District of Boroughs) was a parliamentary constituency consisting of several towns in Monmouthshire. It returned one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the Parliaments of England, ...

. His family subsequently rebuilt the house as Llanarth Court in the seventeenth century. The current house was originally built around 1770 for John Jones. It was remodelled 1849–51 by

Edward Habershon Matthew Edward Habershon (18 July 1826 – 18 August 1900), known as Edward Habershon, was an architect practising in London and south-east England. He specialised in neo-gothic buildings, especially churches and chapels. With his brother W ...

and his brother, W. G. Habershon, in an

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style combined its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century It ...

style. Lord Treowen, the ennobled descendant of the Joneses, died in 1933 and, his only son having predeceased him, the court was inherited by his daughter, the Hon. Fflorens Roch, who gave it to the Roman Catholic Church in 1948. The church passed the court to the

Dominican Order The Order of Preachers (, abbreviated OP), commonly known as the Dominican Order, is a Catholic Church, Catholic mendicant order of pontifical right that was founded in France by a Castilians, Castilian priest named Saint Dominic, Dominic de Gu ...

which ran a school there, Blackfriars School, until 1967. The

Benedictine Order The Benedictines, officially the Order of Saint Benedict (, abbreviated as O.S.B. or OSB), are a mainly Christian mysticism, contemplative Christian monasticism, monastic Religious order (Catholic), order of the Catholic Church for men and f ...

then took over the building, operating a preparatory school for Belmont Abbey School. The school closed in 1986 and the court was sold to AMI Healthcare for conversion into a private hospital. The hospital is currently run by the

Priory Group The Priory Group is a provider of mental health care facilities in the United Kingdom. The group operates at more than 500 sites with over 7,000 beds. Its flagship hospital is the Priory Hospital, Roehampton, which is best known for treating ...

and caters for patients with mental illness or intellectual disabilities. A fire at the court in late April 2020 saw no loss of life, but the destruction of a modern ward. The court itself was undamaged.

Description

The gatehouse of Llanarth Court - geograph

The architectural historian John Newman describes the court as a "monster Neo-classical house", consisting of a three-storey, double pile block of thirteen bays. The entrance porch, reputedly modelled on the temple at

Paestum Paestum ( , , ) was a major Ancient Greece, ancient Greek city on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea, in Magna Graecia. The ruins of Paestum are famous for their three ancient Greek temples in the Doric order dating from about 550 to 450 BCE that ...

, has been removed. The Habershons' work included the rendering and much classical decoration. The interior has been modernised and institutionalised and contains "little of either the later eighteenth or the mid-nineteenth centuries". The Monmouthshire author and artist

Fred Hando Frederick James Hando MBE (23 March 1888 – 17 February 1970) was a Welsh writer, artist and schoolteacher from Newport. He chronicled the history, character and folklore of Monmouthshire, which he also called Gwent, in a series of nearly ...

, recording a visit to the court in the 1960s, noted the presence of two pictures by

Tiepolo Giovanni Battista Tiepolo ( , ; 5 March 1696 – 27 March 1770), also known as Giambattista (or Gianbattista) Tiepolo, was an Italian painter and printmaker from the Republic of Venice who painted in the Rococo style, considered an importa ...

, ''The Healing at the Pool of Siloam'' and ''The Woman taken in Adultery''. The latter is now in the collection of

Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales, branded as simply Amgueddfa Cymru (formerly the National Museums and Galleries of Wales and legally National Museum of Wales), is a Welsh Government sponsored body that comprises seven museums in Wales: * N ...

. The court used to contain the original hall screen from Treowen, but, writing in 1999, Newman stated that the screen "is likely to be returned thither", a view which echoed that of Hando, writing 30 years earlier; "The oak screen dated 1627 was transferred from Treowen where, in my opinion, it would be more happily housed". The gardens surrounding the court are a "well preserved early 19th century landscape park". It is possible that the landscape gardeners Samuel Lapidge and

John Claudius Loudon John Claudius Loudon (8 April 1782 – 14 December 1843) was a Scottish botanist, garden designer and author, born in Cambuslang in 1782. He was the first to use the term arboretum in writing to refer to a garden of plants, especially trees, co ...

were involved in its design. Developments after World War II significantly altered the landscape and many features have been lost, including the kitchen garden dating from the 19th century, and the lake, which is now silted-up. The gardens are listed at Grade II on the

. The Church of St Mary and St Michael, originally the private chapel for the court, stands in the grounds and has its own Grade II* Listing. The

gatehouse A gatehouse is a type of fortified gateway, an entry control point building, enclosing or accompanying a gateway for a town, religious house, castle, manor house, or other fortification building of importance. Gatehouses are typically the most ...

to the southwest of the court, and the gates and gate piers to the north have their own Grade II listings.

Footnotes

References

Sources

* * * * {{Cite book , last=Newman, first=John, author-link=John Newman (architectural historian) , series=The Buildings of Wales , title=Gwent/Monmouthshire , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=knRf4U60QjcC&q=The+Buildings+of+Wales%3A+Gwent%2FMonmouthshire&pg=PA2 , year=2000 , publisher=Penguin , isbn=0-14-071053-1

External links

Coflein record with images of Llanarth Court
Buildings and structures in Monmouthshire Grade II* listed buildings in Monmouthshire Registered historic parks and gardens in Monmouthshire Country houses in Wales