The Influence of People - Gower - page 73

important because of their historic, cultural and landscape value and the scarcity of this habitat, but to
date there have been no detailed surveys. One of the problems associated with maintaining parklands is
the lack of younger generations of trees, which produces a skewed age structure, leading to breaks in the
continuity of dead-wood habitat and therefore the loss of specialised and dependent species.
The most extensive and oldest of the Gower parklands is the Penrice Estate (Fig. 37). Its origins can
be traced back to the twelfth century, when Henry de Beaumont, Earl of Warwick, conquered Gower and
founded the Marcher Lordship. One of his knights took the name de Penrice, and was gifted the land that
would in future form the Penrice Estate. The original wooden castle was succeeded in the thirteenth cen-
tury by the stone structure that stands above the present house overlooking Oxwich Bay. This castle was
inturnabandonedinthefifteenthcentury,withtheManselsbuildingOxwichCastle,asemi-fortifiedman-
or house nearer the sea. In the 1770s, the present Georgian villa at Penrice was built for Thomas Mansel
Talbot whohad inherited the estate through his grandfather'smarriage to Mary Mansel. Asthe house was
built, Thomas Talbot commissioned William Eames, a student of 'Capability' Brown, to lay out the land-
scaped park at Penrice between 1776 and 1779. The present-day lakes, paths, trees and kitchen garden all
datefromthatera.Thepleasure gardensandorangerywereaddedinthe1790s,aswasthefollyknownas
'The Towers', which forms the main entrance to the park.
FIG 37 . The historic parkland of Penrice, showing the house with the earlier medieval castle behind. The tree in the
foreground was once the site of a heronry. (Harold Grenfell)
the author for Figures
Penrice is one of the richest sites in Glamorgan for epiphytic lichens, those lichens that grow on other
plants, and the only one in the county containing a significant concentration of old-forest species. A total
of 93 different species were recorded here during the autumn meeting of the British Lichen Society held
in September 1990. Some of the richest trees were a number of old planes Platanus x hispanica that oc-
cupy a sheltered position adjacent to a patch of carr woodland; they supported small growths of lichens
such as Catillaria sphaeroides , Parmeliella triptophylla , Sticta limbata and S. sylvatica. Of these species
only S. limbata showed signs of spreading onto younger trees. Large oaks in the higher parts of the park