Mounton House,

Mounton Mounton is a hamlet in Monmouthshire, south east Wales, United Kingdom, located two miles west of Chepstow in a rural setting. The parish was originally part of the holdings of Chepstow Priory, with the name Monktown. It has a tiny parish churc ...

Monmouthshire Monmouthshire ( cy, Sir Fynwy) is a county in the south-east of Wales. The name derives from the historic county of the same name; the modern county covers the eastern three-fifths of the historic county. The largest town is Abergavenny, with ...

, Wales, is the last major country house built in the county, constructed between 1910 and 1912 by the architect and writer

Henry Avray Tipping Henry Avray Tipping (22 August 1855 – 16 November 1933) was a French-born British writer on country houses and gardens, a garden designer, and Architectural Editor of '' Country Life'' magazine for 17 years. Early life Tipping was born in the ...

for himself. Formerly a school, which has now relocated to the grounds, the house has been divided into apartments. It is a

Grade II* listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

. The surrounding park is on the

Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales The Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales is a heritage register of significant historic parks and gardens in Wales. It is maintained by Cadw, the historic environment service of the Welsh Government. Th ...

History

Henry Avray Tipping was a garden designer and architectural writer of independent means. Tipping had earlier lived and worked at

Mathern Palace Mathern Palace is a Grade I listed building in the village of Mathern, Monmouthshire, Wales, located some south-west of Chepstow close to the Severn Estuary. Between about 1408 and 1705 it was the main residence of the Bishops of Llandaff. After f ...

in the late 1890s and in 1910 began the construction of his home at

, on the site of a cliff-top garden he had previously designed. Tipping worked with the Chepstow architect

Eric Francis Eric Francis Coppolino (born 1964) is an American investigative reporter who specializes in corporate fraud and toxic torts litigation, and also the former astrologer for the '' New York Daily News'' and '' Marie Claire'' magazine. In 2005, ...

to create a large house in the

Arts and Crafts A handicraft, sometimes more precisely expressed as artisanal handicraft or handmade, is any of a wide variety of types of work where useful and decorative objects are made completely by one’s hand or by using only simple, non-automated re ...

style using local materials. Tipping lived at the house from its completion until 1922, when he moved to another Monmouthshire house and garden of his own design,

High Glanau High Glanau (also known as High Glanau Manor) is a country house and Grade II* listed building within the community of Cwmcarvan, Monmouthshire, Wales. It is located about south-west of Monmouth, and north of Trellech, adjoining the B4293 roa ...

. The house then became the site of a special school until the end of the 20th century. The house and the estate buildings have now been converted to private homes and apartments. The gardens were restored in the 2020s by the landscape architect Arne Maynard. They are listed at Grade II* on the

Description

The house is two-storeyed, with a large hipped roof. The main building forms the central block of a three-sided courtyard, with a service court to the left and a long gallery to the right. The house is a

. A large number of the estate structures have their own Grade II listings including, the North and Vine pergolas, the North and South urns on the bowling green, the tea house, the courtyard buildings, the garden walls and three gardeners' cottages.

Notes

References

* {{Cite book , last=Newman, first=John , series=The Buildings of Wales , title=Gwent/Monmouthshire , url=https://books.google.com/books?id=knRf4U60QjcC&dq=The+Buildings+of+Wales%3A+Gwent%2FMonmouthshire&pg=PA2 , year=2000 , publisher=Penguin , isbn=0-14-071053-1 Grade II* listed buildings in Monmouthshire Country houses in Monmouthshire Houses completed in 1912 Gardens by Henry Avray Tipping Registered historic parks and gardens in Monmouthshire