BRYN-MAWR, LLANERFYL. NPRN 21364
Bryn-mawr is a classic upland farmstead of late-medieval origin. There are few documentary references to Bryn-mawr, but the surviving buildings provide a narrative of continual adaptation and improvement from the C16th to C19th.
Bryn-mawr (or Tyddyn Bryn-mawr) is one of several distinctive Welsh vernacular houses which have become well known from Iorwerth Peate's classic The Welsh House (1940). Peate described Bryn-mawr as one of the most inaccessible houses in Wales, sited on the edge of open moorland. Peate's evocative photograph of Bryn-mawr, used as the frontispiece for The Welsh House, shows a long, low range of `longhouse? type with a rush-thatched and turf-ridged roof, and with smoke issuing from a clay/plastered chimney. Although the house was in a relatively inhospitable site, the antiquity of the dwelling was demonstrated by the survival of several cruck-trusses.
Not long after the publication of The Welsh House, Bryn-mawr was abandoned and the house became ruined. The farmstead was revisited by RCAHMW in 2007 at the invitation of Gary Ball of the Bryn-mawr Trust, which intended restoring the old house. The following observations on the phasing of the range were made after The Bryn-mawr Trust had cleared the interior of the house site.
I. Late-medieval hall-house. Bryn-mawr was formerly a cruck-framed house. The position of one cruck-truss is shown on Peate's plan and the slot for a cruck blade is still present in the surviving masonry. The positions of other cruck-trusses are located on a plan by Ffrangcon Lloyd preserved in the National Monuments Record of Wales. Cruck-trusses are often associated with timber walls but it seems likely from the robust footings that Bryn-mawr was originally stone-walled. The dwelling was a `peasant? hall-house, a distinctive building type fully described in RCAHMW's Houses and History in the March of Wales. The house was characteristically downslope-sited on a platform, though sheltered by a bank. The upper end of the hall-house (inner bay, hall, and passage) was incorporated in the present house. Remarkably part of the house (the former single-bayed hall with inserted fireplace) still remained open to the roof when inspected by Iorwerth Peate.
II. Regional house of lobby-entry type. The hall- house was adapted by the insertion of a fireplace and the creation of an entrance in the lobby-entry position, the prevailing regional plan type. The fireplace seems to have been inserted within the single-bayed hall against the dais partition. The inner room functioned as twin (parlour-)bedrooms. The inserted fireplace heated a new kitchen which took in the hall and the former passage of the medieval house. The single-bayed hall with fireplace remained open to the roof, as did the inner bay. There was a half-loft at the lower end of the kitchen (which incorporated a dairy) over the former passage. The outer bays, probably originally a cow-house, were enlarged as a capacious cowhouse in several phases. Dereliction has revealed a former doorway between house and cowhouse at the lower end of the kitchen. Ragged masonry suggests some radical modification ('removal of a fireplace) at this end of the house.
III. C19th improvements. Several improvements were made to the farmbuildings at Bryn-mawr, probably by the Wynnstay estate which had acquired the farm. A new three-bay range (stable with two-bay barn) was built against the upper-end of the house and is dated by inscription: E + J / 1845. There is a further graffiti inscription inside the range: J Jones 1850. The enlargement of the cowhouse with a three-door gable-end entry probably belongs to this phase. The doorway between house and cowhouse may have been closed at this stage. The walling of the yard may belong to this period. The wall incorporates the remains of a formerly `domed? (=corbelled) pen or kiln (observation by GAW).
Visited 14 May 2007
Richard Suggett, RCAHMW.