The Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales was established in 2002 and given statutory status in 2022. It is administered by Cadw, the historic environment agency of the Welsh Government.[3][4]Elisabeth Whittle described Cadw as having a "somewhat special and guiding role" in the preservation of historic parks and gardens, since they are "an integral part of Welsh archaeological and architectural heritage".[5] The register includes just under 400 sites, ranging from gardens of private houses, to cemeteries and public parks. Parks and gardens are listed at one of three grades, matching the grading system used for listed buildings. Grade I is the highest grade, for sites of exceptional interest; Grade II*, the next highest, denotes parks and gardens of great quality; while Grade II denotes sites of special interest.[6]
There are six registered parks and gardens in Neath Port Talbot. One is listed at Grade I, one at Grade II*, and four at Grade II.
Park, country house garden and kitchen garden[7][8][9] The Gnoll, a house built in the 1770s and demolished in 1957, was located on a prominent, steep-sided hill. The garden and pleasure grounds lie on the hill with the former kitchen gardens lying to the east of the pleasure grounds. The eighteenth-century park was landscaped in several phases and its features include a cascade and several follies.[10][11]
Public park[12] The park opened in 1925 on land that the Earl of Jersey had given for use as a public park in 1908. The original layout of formal and informal areas has been retained. There are sporting facilities in the northern part of the park with woodland areas to the south.[13]
Parks and kitchen garden[14][15][16] This site, which is of "outstanding historical importance", has a walled deer park, pleasure grounds and gardens, and is the product of many phases of development from the Tudor era to the 1950s. Within the grounds are numerous scheduled monuments and listed buildings, including a hydroelectric turbine house (built in 1891), a Georgian orangery, the remains of a Cistercian abbey and a prehistoric hillfort.[17]
Park, country house garden and kitchen garden[18][19][20] The small park and informal gardens provide a picturesque setting for the grade II* listed house which was built c. 1812–1818 by John Nash for his cousin John Edwards. The kitchen garden, which lies to its south-west, probably dates to the same time as the house.[21]
Public park[22] In 1918 Emily Charlotte Talbot (1840–1918) donated a field for use as a memorial to the dead of the first world war. The focal point of the park, which opened in 1926, is the grade II* listed war memorial by Louis Frederick Roslyn. The main gate, entrance lodges, drinking fountain and bandstand are grade II listed.[23][24]
Public park[25] In 1898, the Corporation Field, a piece of land bought from the Gnoll estate in 1856, was renamed the Victoria Gardens having been laid out the previous year by a local builder, Thomas John Snow. At the centre of the park is a bandstand around which are paths, lawns and flower beds. In the south-east quadrant of the park there is a Gorsedd circle.[26]
Whittle, Elisabeth (1992). The Historic Gardens of Wales: An Introduction to Parks and Gardens in the History of Wales. Cardiff: Cadw. ISBN978-0-117-01578-4.