Plans for an outdoor swimming pool at a country mansion once listed as the most expensive house on sale in Wales have been approved.   

Businessman Mark Rose applied to Monmouthshire County Council for planning permission for the pool at Court Saint Lawrence, on the outskirts of Llangovan near Monmouth. 

The house, which is at the end of a 500 metre private drive, is Grade II-listed. When it was placed on the market in 2005, it had a £2.25 million price tag and was reported to likely be the most expensive house ever to go on sale in Wales at that time.   

The planning application also included a pool house and that permission be given for a minor extension of the house’s residential curtilage into an agricultural field to accommodate the pool, patio and the pool house/plant room. 

Planning officer Helen Etherington, who has approved the plans said the 15×4m pool pool, which will have a 2.1m deep end, is considered to be of a size appropriate for private residential use and the pool house is of an appropriate size, scale and design. 

Furthermore, her report said its timber finish of the 6.56×2.46m wide pool house should weather over time to reduce the visual impact and a landscape buffer should reduce the visual impact of the outbuilding on the rural landscape.  

An existing “ha-ha wall” that runs from behind a garden shed across to the corner of an existing stone wall will be extended around the north side of the swimming pool.   

Draining the swimming pool will be undertaken by a tanker meaning there is no significant increase in phosphates levels of local rivers anticipated as a result of the development. 

According to Welsh historic buildings body Cadw the early name of the site, Llanlawrence, implied an early religious site before its development into a farm and then the small country estate in the 18th century.