Maenan Hall

About Maenan Hall

HISTORY:
In 1945 the second Lord Aberconway, owner of Bodnant and creator of much of its garden, bought Maenan Hall as a dower house for his wife, Christabel. The house, now a grade 1 listed building, was in extremely poor condition and had no garden at all. He started to restore the house, and after his death in 1953 this work was completed by Christabel Aberconway, who lived there as well as in London from 1956 until her death in 1974. After he had bought Maenan Lord Aberconway immediately planted 3 clumps of Prunus Avium and 1 of Liriodendron Tulipifera near the House. He also built the walls, following the banks of a former orchard, which now define the walled garden behind the house. However it was Christabel Aberconway who, after his death in 1953, designed and planted the principle features of the upper gardens, which surround the house.
Her youngest son, Christopher McLaren, the present owner, developed the Dell and gradually took over the running and development of the garden, which he continues with his wife Janey. In 1948 Lord Aberconway had laid out the first path in the Dell, which lies at the bottom of the drive and which is separate from the upper gardens, and planted a number of Rhododendrons, which came from the Reserve Garden at Bodnant, and Metasequoia Glyptostroboides. In 1958 the all-pervasive brambles were cleared, and planting has continued ever since, though initially on a sporadic basis. The Glade was first cleared for planting in the late 1970s.

FEATURES:
The garden covers in total about 4 hectares of sloping ground, some steep, and is set amongst mature hardwoods; the upper part is the more formal, with the Walled Garden, borders and formal and informal lawns, all with lovely views over the Conway valley and the Snowdonia foothills. It contains a great variety of ornamental trees and shrubs, the soil being gently acid with rather heavy clay. Its features a formal lawn in front of the house, a walled garden behind it, 3 ponds of varying sizes, and informal grass areas supporting shrubs and ornamental trees. The walled garden contains rose, shrub and herbaceous borders and 2 triangular lawns. The Dell and the adjacent Glade, which lie across the lower drive, slightly detached from the upper garden, are under planted woodland, with Rhododendrons, Camellias, Magnolias, Pieris and Hydrangeas predominating. These, like most of the garden’s plants other than the original Bodnant plants, come from a variety of commercial nurseries including Bodnant. The Drive is planted with Azaleas and other shrubs beneath the original Oaks and Beech. PUBLICATIONS The gardens have, with the house, twice been featured in Country Life (9th & 16th February 1961, and 23rd May & 6th June 1991), in The Field (August 1994), and, with the ‘Crystal Room’ in ‘The English (sic) Garden Room’, (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1986).