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The Hanbury family home at Pontypool House and Park had established walled kitchen gardens on the slopes of Penygarn Hill, by the mid 1700s. Within the walled gardens in the early nineteenth century were built coal-heated Palm Houses (greenhouses) for growing ‘exotic’ fruit, such as peaches, pineapples and grapes. In 1850, they produced 112 pineapples, 103 melons, 406 nectarines, 359 peaches, 295 bunches of grapes, 213 figs and 406 plums. In 1855, the Hanbury-Leigh family employed a head gardener, then Henry Dalrymple - who had his own tied residence on Penygarn Hill, and 22 under...

By Torfaen Museum Micah Lewis, seated on the right, who was head packer at Town Forge in Pontypool for over 30 years, taken in 1920. Picture: Torfaen Museum. IN THE early nineteenth century, Molly Hanbury Leigh of Pontypool House introduced some regeneration and landscaping of Pontypool Park, including the building of the Shell Grotto, Rustic Arbour, picnic features along the brook, kitchen gardens and palm houses, a new stable block (now the museum) and other features - as was the garden fashion of the day. As part of the landscapi...

The Lodge Cottages for the Hanbury’s former home of Pontypool House. Picture: Torfaen Museum. THE HOUSES shown here are the Lodge Cottages for the Hanbury’s former home of Pontypool House, described as Town Lodge (as distinguished from the other, former Park Lodge at the Pontymoile Gates). There were three separate cottages within this building at the north entrance to the house and parkland – which you can see from the three chimneys on this photograph. One house faced towards the roadway to the stables (now museum) and Pontypool House (now St Alban’s R C High School), one face...