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The Grounds
This article was uploaded by Nicholas Cleak at 21:27 09 February 2008
The Grounds are very interesting if you explore their extremities, as you enter Piercefield park through the iron gate (
NG001
) and bear to the right down the dip, you find a tree in a hollow, about 3 feet deep, (
NG006
) I believe this is a bomb crater as in the mid 1980’s I found a rusty fin from a bomb near the tree which stayed there in the hollow for some years. It is probably still there under the grass … It may have been another of the bombs dropped from the plane which bombed chepstow in the war which landed harmlessly in the rocks near the castle. The crater is certainly not far in a straight line from the castle when viewed from the air.
In the hedges and woodland below the mansion near the river there were the remains of a couple of cars rotting away which were from the 1940’s or 50’s , they must have been rolled down from the mansion at some point in time . In the same area near the boundary fence at the bottom of the slope are two concrete “Picket Blocks” (
NG039
-
40
) which were used to tether the parked aircraft in the war. They have laid there undisturbed for 70 years after being rolled down the slope from the mansion in 1941. Unwanted aircraft parts were thrown over the cliff into the river and there are still some aircraft panels down there with their camouflage colour scheme.
The Mansion owners over the years were garden enthusiasts and planted some exotic shrubs and trees in the grounds, Oak, (
NG024
) Chestnut, (
NG022
) Horse Chestnut, holly, (
NG053
) mistletoe…some quite exotic... (
NG026
)
Dotted around the grounds are many horse jumps (
NG043
-
44
) used for the Chepstow 3 day Horse trials in early summer, all unique and hand made with different themes.
A couple of hundred yards from the mansion over in the Severn bridge direction is a copse with a lake and an Island in the middle ,(
NG030
) it is surrounded with the customary very old railings which are found around the whole estate (
NG028
) and there is a concrete base near the Lake railings which once supported a Lewis gun in 1940-41 when the base was an airfield attached to RAF St.Athan (
NG033
NG003
) in the early 80’s it was almost complete less mechanical components and would have been about 10 years old when dumped (NG002), but I have seen it disappear back into
the ground, very little remains today . The first photo is from 1986 the second is 20 years later. The remains of what looks like a chepstow rubbish tip are over the fence.
Around the back of the cottage is a galvanised bath tub in great condition, was this left over from the RAF inhabitation in 1940 I wonder.