Site Record

Gwaun-y-bara was probably erected by Roger Williams, one of the partners in the Caerphilly blast furnace, c.1690. It consisted of a hall with lateral fireplce flanked by a parlour and kitchen, and with a stair in a projection at the rear. After 1707 it became two dwellings, and has remained so. The cottage is on the left side and the right side was formerly used as a workshop for the Mountain Ranger Centre. Following a fire in 2007, the Cottage was largely rebuilt but retains its earlier appearance and layout.

It is a two-storey house of five unequal bays with integral outshuts and a gabled projection to the rear. It has roughcast walls painted white and a slate roof with a brick stack to the right, an external stack to the left and a big stepped stack offset to the right side behind.The doorway is centrally placed inside a porch with a hipped stone-tile roof (lost during the fire) and has a segmental head and a half-lit boarded door. After the fire, the Cottage was almost entirely rebuilt in 2008-09, retaining the appearance and layout of the earlier building.

It is now listed Grade II ( before the fire, it was Grade II*), notwithstanding the reconstruction of Gwaun-y-bara Cottage, for special architectural interest as retaining integrity as a good example for this area of the development of the symmetrical front and centralised planning in domestic architecture in the late seventeenth century.

Source:- Cadw listed Buildings, NJR 11/03/2011