Green-fingered Llandyrnog and Llangwyfan society members!

The February meeting of Llandyrnog and Llangwyfan Local History Society saw Glynis Shaw speaking about historic gardens in the Vale of Clwyd and surrounding areas.

This proved to be very popular with an excellent attendance in Llandyrnog Village Hall.

Glynis by training is an art historian and lecturer, first teaching in London and later at Leeds and Liverpool universities before working at Bangor University in adult education.

In 2008, she gained an MA in photography but maintained an interest in art and particularly designed landscapes.

She has been a member of the Welsh Historic Gardens Trust since 1990s and is a trustee and chair of the Clwyd branch.

In 2020 she became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Glynis explained to members and visitors how so often in conservation and restoration projects, the buildings are saved but not the settings and landscapes which can be considered as not as important.

She described the work of the Welsh Historic Gardens Trust (WHGT) which is a national organisation campaigning to save historic gardens and parks from neglect, indifference, insensitive planning and planting, for future generations.

Members were shown a copy of the Register of Landscapes, Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales: Clwyd which was published by Cadw in 1995 and she gave the audience a 'guided tour' of many of the gardens of significance in the publication.

These included Plas Newydd in Llangollen.

This was owned and developed by The 'Ladies of Llangollen' - Eleanor Butler (1739–1829) and Sarah Ponsonby (1755–1831).

It has a pioneering landscape garden with the famous 'Dell' with special places for reading. The font there was taken from Valle Crucis Abbey and some important features have not survived, such as a moss house.

Those present heard how the original garden at Llannerch Hall, St Asaph, was created by Mytton Davies of Gwysaney in the 1660s.

It was then redesigned by Percy Cane in the early 20th century with an ornamental canal, featuring formal and woodland gardens.

Part of the park is now a golf course.

Also covered was Wynnstay, in the Dee Valley.

This is probably the only significant Capability Brown garden in Wales.

The original house of 1795 was burnt down and re-built in the 19th century.

There is a very rare golden oak which was planted in the 19th century and it came from a Belgium nursery.

There are only about five mature golden oaks in Britain.

At the site, there is also a column that was put up in memory of Sir Watkins William Wynne, 3rd Baronet, who fell whilst hunting on the Acton Estate.

At Llanbedr Hall, near Ruthin, Joseph Ablett's garden is now largely lost. Ablett promoted culture, especially poetry, and William Wordsworth is believed to have visited.

He had ambitions to expand the landscape and this incorporated the church so he built a new one in Llanbedr. He also developed the Denbigh Hospital in 1848, providing the land.

Those at the meeting also learned that Pool Park, in Ruthin, had a huge walled garden and there was a very early sundial, while Rhug, Corwen was landscaped by Repton. There was an incredible Bronze Age burial mound there and later the site of a Motte & Bailey, then an ice house.

At Ruthin Castle, changes in ownership has led to many changes in the garden and landscape.

Also covered was Nantclwyd, at Llanelidan, a late 17th century house.

The gardens were refashioned and extended in the 1960s by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis for Sir Vivyan Naylor-Leyland, with the whole of the south front of the house re-faced in a manner to integrate it with the gardens.

Glynis also spoke about the Dr Evan Pierce memorial gardens in Denbigh.

This listed statue with gardens is very rare with not many examples in Wales.

The statue, unveiled on November 22, 1876 by Sir W Grenville Williams, is by W & T Wills, with the bronze panels by Raggi, added in the mid-1880s.

An unusual enclosed Victorian garden located on Vale Street, it consists of gravel pathways, a lawn, two fountains known as the jubilee fountains and a cast iron gate with moulded finials also known as the jubilee gate.

The garden is a picturesque setting for a memorial column with a commemorative Sicilian marble statue of Dr Evan Pierce, a local doctor, Justice of the Peace, county coroner and five-time re-elected mayor.

Unusually, the commemorative garden was created and dedicated to the doctor whilst he was alive instead of posthumously.

Further to this, it is reputed that Dr Pierce paid for the garden himself on land he already owned, which conveniently stood opposite Salisbury Place, the town house where he lived and worked.

Cymdeithas Hanes Lleol Llandyrnog and Llangwyfan Local History Society is working on a number of projects (supported by the Clocaenog Forest Wind Farm Fund) at the moment.

These are new updated versions of the Llangwyfan and Llandyrnog churchyard inscriptions publications, the next edition in the series of Parish record books, the establishment of a website for the society and a companion book to the society's First World War book to note the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in 2025.

If anyone would like to volunteer to be part of any of these projects, members would love to hear from them.

It could be anything – taking photographs or drawing if they have artistic tendencies, translation from English into Welsh or vice versa, writing 'pages' for the website, typing up contributions that might arrive handwritten, using Ancestry or other sites to check family histories or writing a section for the Second World War book.

Volunteers don’t need any knowledge of history.

For example, one of the chapters in mind is a selection of recipes which were popular during the war.

There might have been some handed down from their mother or grandmother, but if not they can be found either on the web or in magazines and books.

Similarly, what people were growing in their gardens to provide the ingredients for those recipes, or anything else they think might show what life was like in Llandyrnog and Llangwyfan during the 1939-45 period.

All are welcome to society meetings with members paying only £5 for the yearly programme of three meetings and visitors £3 per meeting.

Light refreshments are served for all at the end of every meeting.

For additional details or queries or to join the society, or volunteer to be part of the projects, e-mail the society secretary at llangwyfanhistory@hotmail.com