Additional:

Llwyngorras was a prominent gentry house constructed in 1578 for Thomas George Bowen, the illegitimate son of John Bowen, heir of Sir John ap Owen of Pentre Ifan. The date of the house is confirmed by a date on the fireplace beam above the very large inglenook at the north end of the ground floor and by the 1608 attestation of the historian and antiquary George Owen of Henllys (c.1552?1613) that the house was built `about 30 yeres [sic] past? (quoted in Jones 1996, p. 123). Upon Bowen's death the property passed to his brother Morgan Bowen, whose son Owen and daughter-in-law Elizabeth sold the house to the Webb family. In the late-seventeenth century, the Webbs in turn sold the property to the Davies family. The property also seems to have been subdivided several times with the names Lwyn y Gorres Issa, Llwyn y Gorras Ucha and Llwyn y Gorres Fawr appearing in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century records, although the property appears as entirely in the possession of a Mrs. Davies on the 1843 Tithe map. By the twentieth century the property had become a farmstead.

The structure is a two-storey house of rubble stone, originally roughcast, laid out on a cruciform plan. The cross arm consists of a two-storey front porch and a rear stair case, the stair within with plain, thin eighteenth-century square newels and a moulded rail, lit by a 24-light stair light. There is a lean-to to the right of the north-eastern porch, a single-storey c.1840 drawing room with a hipped slate roof to the north-western gable end, a conservatory to the southeast and a greenhouse to the southwest. All of the gable ends, including the porch, likely formerly had chimneys, although only one, at the north-west before the nineteenth-century addition, remains. The windows are mostly modern sash windows.

Inside, the porch contains benches on each side of a late-sixteenth-century ogee-moulded oak doorcase with a six-panel door. The screens which may have partitioned the main ground-floor space have been removed. The ground-floor space has five massive chamfered and stopped ceiling beams with scratch-moulded enrichment to the exposed joists at the southern end. The rear wing has heavy ceiling beams resting on a reused beam. The nineteenth-century drawing room presents a different character from the rest of the ground floor with a richly moulded plaster cornice with an acanthus, vine scroll and reeded border and a marbled slate fireplace. Below the drawing room is a cellar with storage recesses in the walls. The attic has heavy roof timbers. There are two trusses with pegged collars to the rear wing, while the tripled purlin main roof has curved collars.

The house has notable gardens (NPRN 86689) as well as several notable, listed outbuildings including a nineteenth-century (likely post-1843) outbuilding to the south east, an L-plan range of nineteenth-century outbuildings to the north east, and a nineteenth-century coach house (also likely post-1843).

(Sources: Cadw Listings, Ref Nos 12772, 12773, 12774 and 12775; Places.Library.Wales; Major Francis Jones, Historic Houses of Pembrokeshire and their Families, ed. by Robert Innes-Smith (Newport (Pembs): Brawdy Books, 1996), pp. 122?23; Thomas Lloyd, Julian Orbach and Robert Scourfield, The Buildings of Wales, Pembrokeshire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), pp. 310?11; Sale Particulars for Llwyngoras Farm, Savills Cardiff, undated (c.2018))
A.N. Coward, RCAHMW, 14.05.2019


Llwyngoras, Nevern, Pembrokeshire. NPRN 22278.

Llwyngoras is an important and instructive late sixteenth-century minor gentry house that has preserved its plan and detail substantially intact. It is a worthy grade II*-listed building, i.e. an important house of more than special interest. Llwyngoras was probably a new house on a new site. George Owen, the county historian, c. 1604 draws attention to its siting, the house standing `for health and pleasure? on top of a bank overlooking a pleasant valley, a situation all `the more pleasant? as it was part of the Llwyngoras estate. There were probably gardens and terracing associated with the house that await rediscovery.
House
Llwyngoras belongs to a distinctive class of winged and storeyed houses of gentry status that developed between 1550?1650. The plan and detail of Llwyngoras are consistent with a late sixteenth-century date. Confirmation of the dating is provided by a scratched date of 1578 on the hall fireplace beam. Moreover, George Owen the Pembrokeshire historian, provides supporting documentary evidence (as the list description points out). In his account of Nevern parish c. 1604, Owen says that the house had been built thirty or so years before, and that the builder was Thomas George Bowen of the Pentre Ifan family (Charles 1948).
Houses of this winged type had a national distribution but with some variation in the arrangement of the wings and placing of the principal fireplace, sometimes influenced by the prevailing regional vernacular plan. Peter Smith's Houses of the Welsh Countryside (London, 1975 & 1988), figs 139-42, provides an overview of this plan-type. Llwyngoras is an early example of the cruciform `Renaissance? plan first identified at Six Wells, Glamorgan, by Cyril Fox. In houses of this type the key features of planning are the placing of parlour at the entry as a reception room alongside the hall (rather than placing the parlour beyond the hall in medieval fashion) and the transfer of service-rooms to the rear wing. At Llwyngoras the front is dramatized by a storeyed porch; hall and parlour are on either side of the entrance passage entered from the storeyed porch. The partition between passage and parlour has been removed but the parlour is distinguished by reed-moulded joists. The rear wing contained stair and service-rooms (cellar, buttery etc.). There seems never to have been a kitchen fireplace at Llwyngoras (as might be expected) but it is probable that there was a detached kitchen. The present C19th range called the `Old Kitchen? (brewhouse/pigs? kitchen) is probably a successor to a former detached kitchen. The listing notes a date of 1891 on the trusses.
The end fireplaces allowed a fully centralised plan with independent access to all rooms ? an innovation of the later sixteenth century. The present stairs with square-section balusters probably date from c. 1800 and presumably replaces an earlier stair in the rear wing. (Rob. Scourfield noted some scarring between the large fireplace and rear wing.) The first floor has a central passage which gives access to the chambers and leads directly to the chamber over the porch. The partitions are modern but one wonders if the arrangement reproduces an original system of circulation which avoided a succession of intercommunicating chambers.
The stairs rise to the habitable attics. The porch and rear wing have trusses with lapped collars. The main range retains the original roof-trusses with four collar-beam trusses with arched and morticed collars. The trusses are numbered from the hall end I, II, III and ? (= a crescent).
The surviving period detail includes broad chamfered ceiling beams with run-out stops. The similarly stop-chamfered hall fireplace beam is substantial; the small incised date on the right side of the fireplace beam is authentic. The other fireplaces at ground and first floor are concealed. The windows were replaced in the nineteenth century, but a single early mullioned window has been preserved by the drawing-room addition. The drip mould of a hall window survives in the `office? added to the front elevation.
The various phases at Llwyngoras may be summarised:
I. 1578. A new-built storeyed and winged gentry house of characteristic cruciform plan. Associated with the Bowen family of Pentre Ifan.
II. Possible early C17th improvements. The ogee moulded doorcase with hood suggests that the entry into the house was enhanced in the early C17th. The gate-piers with ball finials (though much altered) may also be earlyish C17th. Probably associated with the second owner, Morgan Bowen, brother of the builder.
III. About 1820-30. Addition of drawing-room beyond the hall. This is a wonderfully unaltered regency room and retains some elegant earlyish C19th plasterwork. Of particular interest is the full-height sash window which allowed one to pass directly into the garden after raising a lower sashed panel. This was a clever feature of picturesque planning dating back to the 1790s that rarely survives. The drawing-room addition takes advantage of the fall in the ground to introduce a cellar below the room.
IV. 1880s. Addition of a farm office on the hall side of the porch. A window has been enlarged as a doorway but the drip mould has been retained. The office has recessed shelving for papers
Farmbuildings
There are several ranges of historic interest adjacent to the house. These include: (1) the `old kitchen? already mentioned with sty behind; (2) the coach house with elliptical arch in the gable end. This was originally lofted with an upper loading door at the upper gable-end. There are interior storage recesses in the upper gable end. The principal farmbuildings enclose a rick-yard. These buildings include (3) a five-bay barn (re-roofed in the C19th) with central threshing floor, and (4) a rather disguised but significant stable range latterly adapted as a cowhouse. The stable range was an eye-catcher for those approaching the house: the gable near the road has a series of dove holes; the lateral wall has the banded stonework characteristic of the Cardigan/St Dogmaels district.
Visited 11 June 2019 at the suggestion of Jessica Seaton.
Richard Suggett, RCAHMW

References:
Charles, B G, `The Second Book of George Owen's Description of Penbrokeshire?, National Library of Wales Journal 5 (1948), 271.
Jones, Francis, Historic Houses of Pembrokeshire and their Families, ed. by Robert Innes-Smith (Newport (Pembs),1996), pp. 122?23.
Smith, Peter, Houses of the Welsh Countryside (London, 1975& 1988), pp. 229-32; figs. 139-42.


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