Listed building or place reference: SA0166

Historic site reference
Property: Howard Davis Park
Road name: St. Clements Road
Parish: St. Saviour
Location: View on map
Grade: Listed Place Grade 1
Category: Designed landscape
Statement of significance: The extensive garden of a substantial early C19 villa, which became a public park in the early C20 with the addition of the memorial garden on the south side. It is typical of the sophistication of large suburban villa gardens of the period in the British Isles and reflects Picturesque designs published by John Claudius Loudon, but it is an increasingly rare and vulnerable type, due to losses to redevelopment. This makes its survival all the more important. Many private gardens in the British Isles were adapted as public parks in the late C19 and early C20 and this site is typical of that sensitive re-use. The villa garden design retains most of its significant features except for the house. Despite this loss the design is little damaged otherwise as it continues to reflect the layout for the now lost villa, its site being still open and reading as the focus of the design. The combination of the villa origin and public park overlay and their survival as a complete design make an important surviving C19 landscape design in Jersey.
Context: n/a
External Description: An early C19 villa garden in Picturesque style, the grandest in St Helier in the early C19, which was adapted and extended as a public park in the mid-C20. The urban site is roughly triangular, bounded by Don Road and Georgetown Road to the north-east, St Clements Road to the west, and La Route du Fort to the south. It slopes gently south from the high point at the north-west corner where the large villa formerly stood, and would originally have had a sea view. It is bounded by granite retaining walls to the north-east, west and partly along the south boundary, with the late C19 St Luke's Church forming a significant feature beyond the south boundary. The original south boundary of the garden is marked still, in part, by a border along the perimeter path. The main entrance to the villa, and still to the public park, gave access directly from the centre of the town, at the north-west corner off Colomberie. It is now marked by an imposing rusticated gateway including large iron gates and an overthrow between iron railings, set back from the road. A second, pedestrian, entrance was created for the public park on the south boundary at the end of the path to St Luke's Church aligned on Beach Road; it has large granite gate piers and iron gates. It provided access from the main holiday area focussed on Le Havre des Pas promenade and from the main seaside villa area. Other lesser pedestrian entrances created for the public park provide access from George Town Road and the south end of St Clements Road. The principal building was the early-C19 rendered villa, Plaisance, which had wings and a conservatory in front of the service wing on the south side. The composition faced south-east: overlooking the main lawn surrounded by informal pleasure ground walks set in wooded shrubberies, much as today. The site of the house is marked by a statue of King George V in a circular lawn and a raised lawn for seasonal bedding, with an apron in front of it to the north-west which was the site of the carriage approach to the front door. The flagpole is the former spinnaker boom from TB Davis famous yacht 'Westward'. Nearby to the north is the Howard Davis Memorial Hall, a neo-classical rendered building with entablature and pilasters and a high portico in the east side, originally the billiard room and the only surviving part of the house. The south perimeter path divides the earlier garden from the 1938-40s formal garden which is laid out in a contrasting formal pattern of lawns divided by paths focussed on a central pool and fountain. A group of Commonwealth War Graves at the east end is overlooked by the west end of St Luke's Church. The villa's walled former kitchen garden at the south-west corner is enclosed by high granite walls and has become a formal rose garden with a brick and timber pergola, and a pool at the west end dedicated to JD Colledge who oversaw the remodelling from 1938. It remains screened from the main garden lawns and perimeter path by trees and shrubs, much as it was in the C19. The area to the west alongside St Clements is now a tea garden with a cafe and to the north is a maintenance yard with a granite cottage; in the early C19 the north end of this area contained a group of modest buildings surrounding the stable yard, and productive gardens to the south. Other public park features added in the mid C20 include a Modern Movement style concrete bandstand at the west edge of the lawn, a rock and water garden around the north and outer sides of the walled garden, and a formal bedding display around the gravel apron at the entrance off Colomberie. The park is planted with many mature trees, particularly holm oak, lime and a veteran sweet chestnut on the north side of the lawn.
Internal Description: n/a
Special interest: Architectural,Historical

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15/05/2018

Schedule Listed Building Grade 1

4.05 MB

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