Walls, Steps, Terraces, Pavilion, Summerhouses and Cottage attached to wall of the Hanging Gardens

Hanging Gardens with Walled Terraces, Stone Stairways and Associated Garden Buildings

This is a series of interconnected hanging gardens that descend the slope of the cwm from St. Donat's Castle to the Cavalry Barracks, comprising walled terraces, stone stairways, and various garden buildings.

The Top Garden is enclosed by high walls on the north-east and part of the north-west sides, with a terrace wall featuring a low parapet on the south-east and a retaining wall with parapet on the south-west. A four-centred arch doorway with planked door opens in the north-west wall. The north-east entrance has a four-centred arch with stopped and chamfered jambs and two planked doors with cover strips and hinges. The north-east wall contains one further stopped and chamfered doorway. The south-east terrace wall features four projections from the early 20th century, the north-east one incorporating a doorway with steps down to the second garden. Sixteen stone steps with stone balustrades also descend to the second garden in the south-west corner.

To the north-west of this garden, accessible by a path round the Lady Anne Tower, stands a small stone garden pavilion with a pyramidal slate roof and finial. This may date to the 18th century, as it appears in a Samuel and Nathaniel Buck print of 1740, though it was renovated in the early 20th century. The Buck print also shows the west buttressing for the top terrace.

The Second Garden has a terrace wall on the north-west, a stone flagged path and stone parapet on the south-west, and a high north-east wall that rises in the centre over an arched entrance with stone voussoirs. The south-east terrace wall is present, and eleven steps in the south-west corner lead down to the Tudor Garden.

The Tudor Garden owes much of its present style to Morgan Stuart Williams' ownership in the early 20th century. It features a north-west terrace wall with a north-east flight of steps leading back up to the second garden. A stone flagged path with a stone parapet wall runs on the south-west, breached by a gateway with a pair of late 19th or early 20th century iron gates against a stone stair balustrade, above a flight of steps leading south-west out of the garden. The north-east wall has four wide steps with dwarf stone balustrades leading to a gateway with ashlar gate pairs topped by ball finials.

At the south end of the north-east wall stands an Italianate summer-house built in the late 1920s or early 1930s, constructed in part upon the north-east retaining wall of the Rose Garden. Though the 1919 Ordnance Survey 25-inch map may suggest an earlier date, it is single-storey with stone walls and a stone tile hipped roof. Its front wall forms a loggia with three semi-circular arches on stumpy columns, while the rear wall has a segmental headed doorway and a floor of quarry tiles laid in herringbone fashion. Small glazed Gothic windows appear in the south gable and east wall. The loggia is very much in the garden manner of Harold Peto.

Within the garden centre, bounded by yew hedges, four stone flagged paths lead to a lozenge-shaped central space marked by an octagonal stone pier with an octagonal wooden bench arranged around it. This pier may have been formed from the well-head removed from the Inner Court of the castle. Eight heraldic stone emblems or "Queen's beasts" perch on octagonal stone columns bounding the central space, with eight further beasts flanking the four paths at the garden entrances and one additional beast in each garden corner. These are based on similar 16th-century beasts on the entrance bridge parapets at Hampton Court Palace.

In the south-west corner of the Tudor Garden, twenty-one stone steps lead down through a half landing to the Rose Garden.

The Rose Garden has a lofty north-west terrace wall with stone buttresses. Eight stone columns linked by chains (some missing) stand in the centre, and at the south-west angle sits an early 20th century summer-house. The 1919 Ordnance Survey map indicates its presence. This summer-house has a polygonal stone tile hipped roof supported in front by two circular stone columns and at rear and sides by garden walls, forming a square meeting a hexagon—effectively half of each shape. It is open-fronted, containing a timber bench and two small arched windows. A north-west flight of twenty stone steps leads down to the Blue Garden.

The Blue Garden features high north-east and north-west retaining walls against the Rose Garden and the upper path to it. A north-west loggia of five bays with a hipped stone tile roof sits on four octagonal columns with end walls, as shown on the 1919 Ordnance Survey map. A probably 20th-century pergola is incorporated into the south-west wall. A south-east four-centred stopped and chamfered doorway at the head of five stone steps opens to the Harp Garden.

The Harp Garden has a stone north-east wall with a north-east four-centred arch opening. Its north-west terrace wall is bounded by flower beds and then by a stone path descending to the south-west in five flights: three flights of ten steps, one of six steps, and a corner flight of five. A central diagonal path is bounded on the north-east by a stone terrace wall.

At an angle between the north-east and south-east walls stands a cottage of one storey and attic, probably renovated in the early 20th century, though possibly of 16th-century origin. The 1899 and 1919 Ordnance Survey maps show its presence. Built of Lias limestone rubble with lozenge-shaped concrete roof tiles, the front wall has had its crow-stepped gable rebuilt without the steps in the late 20th century. The ground floor has a four-centred arch doorway and a single light window in a chamfered frame. Two further single light first-floor windows with diamond panes are present; one appears to be a recent addition. On the south-east elevation, a flight of stone steps leads up to the first-floor entry.

A high rubble wall forms the south boundary of the garden area. On the west, another wall about 2 metres in height with triangular coping and three semi-circular bastions runs from the sundial lawn to the churchyard wall.