Tre Hill Farm

Explorer Tom At Dyffryn Gardens, an Edwardian grand design keeps opening little doors inside the bigger one. One turn brings a formal lawn, another a walled kitchen garden, and another an exotic glasshouse beside the Vale of Glamorgan countryside. Tom has asked for the garden's floor plan; the hedges have voted to keep him guessing. Coal merchant John Cory bought the estate in 1891 and built the present house soon afterwards. His son Reginald loved plants, financed collecting trips and worked with garden designer Thomas Mawson to create the garden rooms. The Paved Court and Pompeian Garden show their taste for a carefully arranged scene, while the arboretum preserves trees from an older part of the estate. The place grew from industrial wealth, a fact worth remembering among the flowers. It also grew from serious curiosity about plants, and that curiosity still gives each space a different character. Walk from broad lawns into smaller enclosures, then compare the shapes and textures of trees in the arboretum. The glasshouse and productive kitchen garden change with the seasons, so a second visit will not repeat the first. Restoration continues, and parts of the gardens or house can be closed while work is under way. Tom claims the cacti are rehearsing a guard of honour; give those sharp fellows a little room. The National Trust runs Dyffryn as a public garden near St Nicholas, with admission charges and visiting arrangements on its own page. The Victorian house is mostly closed for restoration, though its exhibition may be open; check before planning around it. Stay for the small garden rooms, where a turn of the path can make an ambitious estate feel wonderfully personal.

Explorer Tom Bryn Eryr at St Fagans is an Iron Age farmstead rebuilt from archaeological clues, with two broad thatched roundhouses tucked together like neighbours sharing a secret. The walls are thick enough to make my excuses bounce off them; even I cannot claim the ancient builders lacked ambition. The original site lay near Llansadwrn on Anglesey. Excavations between 1985 and 1987 found three successive roundhouses and changes to an enclosing stockade, bank and ditch. Museum Wales reconstructed the earliest two houses here, drawing on evidence that they may have formed a joined building with two rooms. Their rammed-clay walls are about 1.8 metres thick, a striking experiment in recreating the material and structure rather than simply sketching an Iron Age outline. Stand between the two forms and imagine daily work where farming, cooking and shelter all had to fit within these walls. The original household kept cattle and sheep and grew grain, according to the museum's learning material. I reckon the thick clay was also built to muffle complaints about whoever burned supper; that is nonsense. The excavated evidence, volunteer reconstruction and unusual joined plan are quite real, and they make this more than a pair of picturesque huts. These are modern reconstructions at St Fagans National Museum of History, not the excavated remains on Anglesey. Museum Wales currently lists Bryn Eryr as open to visitors, but check its visit page for the day's arrangements. Entry to the museum is free; parking may cost. Take a moment with the walls and roof before moving on: the people who built this reconstruction tested ideas about how such a home could actually stand.