Plas Brondanw, Country house and Grade I garden in Llanfrothen, Wales.
Plas Brondanw is a country house with formal gardens in Llanfrothen, Gwynedd, Wales, divided into a series of enclosed rooms formed by tall yew hedges and stone walls. Paths connect these spaces and lead the eye toward the peaks of what is now Eryri National Park.
The house dates to around 1550, built by John ap Hywel, and passed to the Ellis family through marriage in 1807. Clough Williams-Ellis inherited it as a young man and spent decades gradually shaping the gardens into what visitors see today.
The gardens carry the personal vision of Clough Williams-Ellis, the architect behind Portmeirion, who shaped every hedge room and stone path himself. His eye for framing views against the mountains of Snowdonia gives the garden a theatrical quality that visitors notice immediately.
The gardens are open most days and the paths are generally easy to walk, though some areas have uneven stone surfaces worth watching underfoot. A small café on the grounds serves refreshments during the warmer part of the year.
A tower on the grounds was given to Williams-Ellis as a wedding gift by the Welsh Guards in 1915, which makes it one of the more personal additions to the estate. From the top, the view takes in both the mountains and the sea at the same time.
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