2.2
|
Description of the contract
The National Botanic Garden of Wales has HLF and other funding to undertake the delivery phase of a project to restore the Regency waterpark within the parkland of the Middleton Hall estate. The parkland is included in the Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Historic Interest in Wales.
The National Botanic Garden of Wales is situated near Llanarthne in the Towy Valley, Carmarthenshire and is both a visitor attraction and a centre for botanical research and conservation, and features the world's largest single-span glasshouse. It is set in a 585 acre site which includes ornamental lakes, woodland, farmland and landscaped parks in addition to the visitor buildings and facilities.
The site of the Garden is a historic parkland surrounding the now lost Middleton Hall. In 1789 the estate was acquired by William Paxton who constructed Middleton Hall with a Regency landscape to surround it. This included a sequence of lakes and water features as well as scenic walks and parkland. The landscape architect for this work may have been Samuel Lapidge and the civil engineer is likely to have been James Grier.
In circa 1815 a series of 15 landscape paintings of the parkland and house were completed by Thomas Hornor. The house was destroyed by fire in 1931 and the site lay largely dormant until the 1980s, when some limited conservation work was carried out.
In the 1990s, the Great Glasshouse was constructed and three of the historic lakes were restored, Pwll yr Ardd, Llyn Uchaf and Llyn Canol. This work was part of the wider project in advance of the Garden opening in 2000.
The current project, Middleton, Paradise Regained, Reclaiming a Regency Rarity, is aiming to restore a further portion of the historic landscape. This includes reinstatement of two large reservoirs (Llyn Mawr ~65,000m3 capacity, and Llyn Felin Gat, slightly under 10,000m3 ), a smaller body of water above a waterfall, construction of new water control features, restoration of existing water control features, parkland walks and seven pedestrian bridges. The proposals have been developed by the project's design team, comprising joint lead consultants Mann Williams and Nicholas Pearson Partnership, as civil and structural engineering consultants and landscape conservation architects respectively, with additional consultancy expertise from HR Wallingford (hydrological and dam construction), Caroe and Partner’s (conservation architects), and Mildred Howells (cost consultancy) with CDM provided by Swansea Council. In a two year development phase the project’s design and proposals have been further informed by a range of in depth studies covering site archaeology, topography, geotechnical site investigations, and a yearlong ecological study, and were developed around existing and new historic evidence such as the Hornor paintings.
The project’s construction phase is planned to take place from May 2018 to August 2020, and will be supported by a range of activities, events and publicity. Currently, the site is being cleared by Lampeter Tree Services under the recently published contract notice on Sell2Wales (Award Notice No 72887)
|