Dingestow Court

The court has an "unusually complicated building history". Its earliest origins are recorded by the Monmouthshire antiquarian Sir Joseph Bradney as being a manor owned by John ap James, a descendant of Sir Guyan le Grand, "a Norman adventurer who came into Wales at the conquest of Glamorgan". The James family, later Jones, constructed the precursor to the present building in the early sixteenth-century. Part of the gatehouse range of this building survives. The Joneses continued to occupy the court until the deaths in 1789 of Richard Jones, known as "Happy Dick" on account of his "liberality and geniality", and, a few years later, of the last heiress, Mary, who died "a nun at Ghent". The estate was then bought, and the main house rebuilt by James Duberley. The court remains the private home of the Bosanquets and is not open to the public, although the grounds are occasionally opened for charitable events. ==Architecture and description==

The varied building history of the court is reflected in its rather disjointed appearance and its "entertaining confection of styles (such as would have warmed the heart of Osbert Lancaster)". They are a largely complete example of a nineteenth-century park. Bradney describes the pre-Milner gardens as comprising "meadows of considerable extent" which led to a large lake, and records that, during the English Civil War soldiers drained the lake, removing "fish to the value of 50 shillings". The gardens are listed at Grade II on the Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales. ==Notes==