Gnoll Country Park
The Gnoll Country Park is a park in Wales. It is an early-18th-century landscaped garden covering over in the Vale of Neath, in Neath Port Talbot county borough in south Wales. The park is designated Grade II* on the Cadw/ICOMOS [Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales].
History
The estate was the property of the Mackworth family during the 18th and 19th centuries. There are few traces remaining of the house, once considered "one of the finest residences in the principality".Historically, the estate was part of the Norman-owned territory of Neath and Afan, which also comprised Neath Abbey and Neath Castle. The first recorded individual owner was Evan ap David during the 16th century. The last of Evan's descendants to own it was Sir Herbert Evans, who died in the late 17th century. Sir Herbert's daughter and sole surviving heir, Mary, married Humphrey Mackworth in 1686 and on her death ten years later, Mackworth became owner of the estate.
Mackworth extended the house, and developed various coal mining interests locally, as well as branching out into other industries. His eldest son, Herbert Mackworth, continued his industrial interests, and developed the Gnoll copper works. Sir [Herbert Mackworth, 1st Baronet], Herbert's son, increased the amount of coal mining carried out on the estate.
Through the widow of Sir Herbert's brother Robert Mackworth, the estate passed to Capel Hanbury Leigh, Lord Lieutenant of Monmouthshire, and it was later bought by Henry Grant of Pembrokeshire and Wormley, Hertfordshire Shortly before his son Henry John Grant's death in 1861, there was a plan in 1857 to use the castle as a university college and some staff including the gamekeeper moved to Wormley, but instead it was purchased by a cousin Charles Evan-Thomas of Llwynmadoc, who demolished the east wing and added other architectural features. He was the father of Admiral Hugh Evan-Thomas, who was born at the Gnoll. A year after Sir Hugh's death, the Gnoll was bought by Neath corporation as a site for a war memorial. The castle was demolished in 1957.