Pen-y-Cefn is a two-storey, rubble stone built farmhouse which is colour washed at the front and roughcast to the sides. It has a slate roof, stone chimneys to the rear and one side, brick chimneys to the other side and a later rear extension. It was proabably originally a sixteenth century minor gentry house and the the form with lateral stack to the rear suggests a three-unit plan with cross passage which may have had an open hall. The stone stack at one end suggests a heated parlour and this pattern conforms with nearby hall houses of a sixteenth century date. The reported stair position could represent an insertion into the cross passage as in other Cheshire examples of the period. The rear wing, a later extension was refenestrated in the nineteenth century. The interior includes a cambered bressummer over hall fireplace, timber-framed walls, plank doors with strap hinges and stairs leading up from the entrance lobby.

Source:- Cadw listed buildings, NJR 08/06/2010

[Additional: RFS/RCAHMW/Nov. 2019] Tree-ring dating commissioned by the Discovering Old Welsh Houses Group in partnership with RCAHMW. Results from Oxford Dendro. Laboratory reported in the tree-ring dates for 2019, Vernacular Architecture 50, List 311:

4. CILCAIN, Pen-y-cefn (SJ 1886 6677) Felling date range: 1593?8
Purlins (1/3) 1568 (2?25C NM); Principal rafters (0/2); Collar (0/1); Ceiling beam (0/1). Site Master pycc02 1469?1568
(t?8.9 PENIARTH; 7.6 ALKINGTON; 7.6 OLDHLLFM).
A late sixteenth-century stone-built storeyed farmhouse of high-status regional plan-type, signalled by the tall lateral
chimney of the hall. The house has a three-unit plan with hall and outer parlour on either side of the entrance
passage and inner service rooms beyond the hall. This is Peter Smith's `Regional house type A?, which has a
heavy concentration in north-east Wales, Map 28 in Houses of the Welsh Countryside (London, 1975 and 1988).
Many originated as hall houses but Pen-y-cefn was built as a storeyed house. A `best? kitchen wing has been
added to the upper (service) end of the house. Some period detail survives, including a shaped doorhead on the
stairs and the studded parlour door. The roof uses A-frame collar and rafter trusses. NPRN 36127.