Cloister Garden

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From the North Lawn the land slopes gently away and the house looks westwards out towards Grongaer Hill. The courtyard we find here is Aberglasney's most extraordinary and legendary feature. On three sides vast arcaded stone structures support a broad parapet walkway. The house itself stands a little apart as the fourth side, loosely closing off the rectangle. For a long time the vegetation here was so dense and the stonework in such decay that it was almost impossible to see exactly what the structures consisted of - let alone to guess their purpose.

Opposite the house the western range shelters a long arcaded walkway - the cloister or cryptoporticus - but the two side ranges are solid, pierced by deep archways. Visitors were invariably puzzled.

Almost every instance of the formal raised terraces that we know were popular in this period has since disappeared, having succumbed to Civil War depredations or to the eighteenth-century Landscape Movement, when formal enclosures beside the house were often swept away to make room for a more open parkland setting.

Amazingly, investigation in the late 1990s revealed that Aberglasney's parapet walkway was indeed a unique survivor of a style of garden architecture that is now found only in records of lost gardens.

During the 1990s, once rampant vegetation was cleared, the sifting of layers of soil and debris began to reveal this enclosure in its true colours.

Some Flowers that can be Found Here

Below are some of the plants and flowers that can be found in this part of the garden.
Click on a picture to view a closeup.

Tulips The scientific name for this group of bulbous plants is Tulipa and was assigned by the famous Swedish botanist Linnaeus in the mid 1700's. The name tulip is derived from the Persian word toliban meaning turban, which is an apt term to describe the flower shape of certain tulips. As odd as it may seem, there is not a single species of tulip native to Holland, the country most frequently associated with these colorful, well-known flowers.

Orange Trees These semitropical evergreens probably originated in Southeast Asia. Columbus and other European travelers brought sweet orange seed and seedlings with them to the New World.

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