Cefnamwch House is a late seventeenth-early eighteenth century house or wing, set at right angles to the old house of Cefnamwlch (NPRN 26238). There are long contemporary service wings on the west and south. The old house was demolished in the earlier nineteenth century and the present house and grounds were reconfigured around this time.

The house faces north. It was originally a two storey, five bay building with an attic lit by dormers. Within there was a central passage and stair, with a single large room to either side. The house was raised by a storey in the earlier nineteenth century. It has a gabled slate roof framed by tall end chimney stacks. A later veranda runs across the face of the lower storey and along the western service wing. A library wing of 1877, projecting to the east, has since been demolished.

The service wings are long two storey ranges with slate gabled roofs punctuated by tall chimney stacks. They form the north and east sides of the courtyard south of the house. The western range was known as the Mule Stable and formed the south side of the courtyard west of the old house. The first section of the return to the south, in the coach house wing, is considered part of the service range. Ajoining the Mule Stable on the west is the Bailiff's House. The isolated gatehouse (NPRN 26237) is a relic of the old house.

Sources: RCAHMW Caernarvon. Inventory III (1964), 86-7 No. 1686
CADW Listed Buildings Database (4222)

John Wiles, RCAHMW, 25 April 2007

Additional:

See the descriptions in RCAHMW, Caernarvonshire Inventory III (1964), pp. 86-7; Haslam et al., The Buildings of Wales: Gwynedd (2009), pp. 530-1.

The demolished (NPRN 26238) and present houses at Cefnamwlch, viewed together in the Ingleby (NLW) and other drawings, were in a unit system arrangement with the subsidiary house set at right-angles to the principal house. The houses flanked the S and E sides of a courtyard entered from a gatehouse (dated 1607) on the W side which was aligned with the principal house. This pattern of dual domestic dwellings was a characteristic feature of gentry houses in Gwynedd, and the subsidiary house served as a dower house. Comparable dower house arrangements are discussed in the journal Vernacular Architecture 2013. These courtyard groups sometimes developed into country house complexes with two ranges flanking the principal house, as at Ynysymaengwyn. Often, ambitious building plans were never realised. At Cefnamwlch the principal house was demolished, presumably with the intention of building a new villa, but was never rebuilt. The dower-house then became the principal house and a new service courtyard developed behind (S) the house (coach-house, stable, bake- and brew-house).

Summary of phases of the present house:
1. C. 1600+. The present house (former dower house) is a self-contained house of Snowdonian type with hall and parlour on either side of a broad cross-passage. The hall has a lateral fireplace, broadly suggesting a building date of c.1600 but the architectural detail is concealed. Houses of the Welsh Country, fig. 96, notes several dated examples of this plan type (1585, 1619) with a distribution map (Map 28) showing sites concentrated in north Wales. The ground-floor partitions are (unusually) masonry walls; one would have expected timber partitions set under the beams.
2. C. 1700+. The house was refitted with bolection-moulded fireplaces and several doorcases. The house in this phase was fully storeyed with attic dormers. The long (south) service range behind the house and the west (stable) range probably belong to this phase. The stable range retains several stop-chamfered beams with elongated ogee stops.
3. C. 1815+. In a third phase, with the demolition of the old house, the secondary house was refitted as the principal house. There were numerous modifications, including: (1) a verandah with wooden columns which extended to the gatehouse as a covered walk; (2) raising the eaves to provide a third storey (the trusses seem simply to have been `lifted?); (3) the introduction of a new ramped stair with square-section balusters behind the parlour; (4) the conversion of the first-floor rooms over the service range into `family? accommodation reusing bolection-moulded fireplaces; (5) the multi-paned sash windows probably date from this phase.
4. C. 1850. The verandah was enclosed to provide more light and space for the principal rooms.

R.F. Suggett/RCAHMW/Sept. 2019.