Medieval hallhouse rebuilt as type B; 17th century inserted floor, stone rubble walls, slate gabled roof.

Additional:

Cwm Farm is a cruck-framed stone walled house with a cross-passage doorway of distinctive Snowdonian type with a head of voussoirs. The house was conceived as a three-unit hall-house of `gentry? type with a central archbraced truss in the two-bayed hall. A two-door dais partition of post-and-panel type survives with a canopy and evidence for a dais bench. The central truss has cusped principals and there are cusped windbraces. Both the dais partition and the archbraced truss have a distinctive nail head ornament punctuating the chamfers at intervals.

The central archbraced truss is embedded in the hall chimney showing that the fireplace is an insertion. Tree-ring dating has established that the fireplace of c. 1535 is very nearly contemporary with the crucks. Nevertheless the crucks are clearly primary and the building sequence seems to be:
1. Hallhouse c. 1523. Wallplate 1523 falls within the date range of the crucks (1507-37; 1509-39, 1502-29/32). The first floor corbelled fireplace (with stockpiled lintel?) falls within this phase.
2. Inserted fireplace c. 1535. The screen also belongs to this phase and is part of the second phase improvement to the house.
3. 1567/8. Repair phase. One of the principal rafters of the outer-room truss (truss 3) has been replaced. The upper-end stone stair may belong to this phase and the creation of a lobby entrance superseding the cross-passage.

Tree-ring dating commissioned by RCAHMW in association with North-west Wales Dendrochronological Project 2011.

Richard Suggett/RCAHMW/August 2011