Moorshead is a vernacular house in the regional style of Glamorgan: built of limestone and with robust stone details, including a mural stair and draw-bar socket. As it stands today, the house appears to have a lobby-entry plan against a central chimney and was noted as having this plan in RCAHMW's Glamorgan Farmhouses and Cottages (Map 88). However, the surviving detail suggests that this is not the original plan-type and that the lobby-entrance was created after the addition of an outer parlour, probably in the C19th.

The house was originally a fine example of a two-unit house with a gable-end entrance. The gable-end entry houses are included within the family of hearth-passage houses (`longhouses?) At Moorshead the outer room has been added against the original two-unit house. Numerous examples of two-unit, end entry houses are illustrated in Glamorgan Farmhouses and Cottages (plans B15-22). Photographs of Moorshead do not show an obvious joint between the old house and the added outer room. However, remarkably, a socket for a draw-bar which secured the principal door in the gable end has survived showing that the gable-end entrance was the principal doorway. The principal room (hall) is heated by a large gable-end fireplace with timber mantelbeam and chamfred stone jambs with diagonal (`Glamorgan?) stops. A stone fireplace stair is housed in an outshut or projection alongside. The division between hall and inner-room was defined by a timber partition. The partition has been removed but the mortices for a partition of post-and-panel type survive in the soffit of the head-beam. Partitions of this type are relatively uncommon in Glamorgan (Map 37).

Houses of this type are usually assigned a seventeenth-century date. The dating depends on the architectural detail. At Moorshead the ogee-stopped lintel over the principal hall window is a classic mid- and later seventeenth-century detail. A mid- or earlier seventeenth-century date is however suggested by a combination of vernacular detail: the stair projection, the post-and-panel partition, and the draw-bar socket.

Architectural features:
Several distinctive features are recorded on the distribution maps in Glamorgan Farmhouses and Cottages:
Map 46: curved stop with fillet on ceiling beam (the joists are plain).
Map 59: cross-corner stone stair in outshut, said to be characteristic of the Ogwr Valley and western Vale
Map 88: internal chimney houses. This is the internal chimney created by the addition of the Parlour wing.

Additional features:
Map 37: timber (post-and-panel) partition
Map 80: hearth-passage house of end-entry type.
Map 49: ogee stop.
Map 43: diagonal stop.

Summary of building phases:
1. c.1650 or earlier: a storeyed farmhouse of regional two-unit type with gable-end entry.
2. c.1800+: the addition of an outer parlour and the creation of a central lobby entrance.
3. c.1900: further additions.

Photographs: Brian Malaws
Richard Suggett/ RCAHMW/January 2015.