a recent issue of Spadework - Cardiganshire Horticultural Society

Henry Avray Tipping was one such designer, and scholarly
contributor and Architectural Editor to Country Life for 30 years,
describing the glories of the English (and Welsh and Scottish)
country house and garden. He attracted important commissions
such as the sunken garden at Chequers and at other houses, many
of them in Gwent and the border counties. For his own use he
successively occupied three houses in the vicinity of Chepstow,
restoring and rebuilding Mathern Palace, Mounton House, and then
in 1922 buying a 1500-acre estate at Lydart in order to build High
Glanau, at a virgin site of his choosing. The house is perched on a
steep escarpment facing west over the lowlands towards the distant
Black Mountains. It is in many ways a distillation of all the ideas
he had found pleasing in his previous houses, with his signature
oak-panelled drawing room, a ribbon parterre flanked by double
borders, a pergola, and steep broad steps descending to an
octagonal pool centred on the front of the house.
Helena and her husband came to High Glanau in 2002 and have
industriously restored the house and gardens to its period style.
Hence the swimming pool had to go. In its place the end of the
house looks out along a broad level terrace of close-cut grass
flanked on either side by generous borders. The whole concept is
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