Description1. Tudor. 2 & 3 storey. Stone mullioned windows. Porch with stone arched entrance.
2. The main range of this house seems likely to date from the late C16, say 1580-1600 with the wing added approx. 1625-40. The house was clearly altered in the C19, and it is known that this was done before 1853, but not long before, as it was reported in 1860 that alterations had put 'an entire new face on the structure'. The house was also reroofed at that period and given the porch and the new circular shafts on the wing chimney. As to whether any of the mullioned windows are in-situ, or are all a C19 introduction, this could only be ascertained if the render were removed. The house was restored in 1970 and has been further extended and improved c2000. Its features are compatible with the datestone 'A.N.D.N. 1581' over an upstairs fireplace, but the fireplace must have been introduced as it is earlier than the room it stands in.
Only the ground floor of the main range was seen. This has seen changes from its original planning, which must have had the parlour at the north end and the service end on the south. The three ground floor rooms in the main range have large fireplaces with chamfered stone jambs and oak lintels, newel stair beside the central one and a straight flight stair around a solid core in the wing. The south-east room on the first floor of the wing is reported to have a Bath stone fireplace with a C19 plaster inscription 'A.N.D.N. 1581' over it, which was in place by 1853. The doorway from the stair into this room has a shaped head characteristic of the second quarter of the C17. There is also some imported early C17 panelling and some C17 painted plasterwork in other rooms.
The house is built of roughly coursed and squared local red sandstone rubble, which has been given a cement roughcast on the north and east elevations, with limestone window dressings, and stone stacks. Its Welsh slate roof has been renewed since listing in 1952. It has an L-shaped plan with the foot of the L projecting forward from the left of the main elevation. There is a single depth 2-unit main range of two storeys with attics including the wing. It has a modern outshut along the rear wall, and a single depth cross-wing. All the windows on the main elevations are Bath stone with leaded lattice casements.
The entrance elevation of the main range has an off-centre door between two leaded 3-light stone mullioned windows with arched heads, hollow chamfers and hood-moulds, with square headed 3-light ones above them. The gabled porch has a 'Tudor' 4-centred headed entry and plank door within. Externally there are barge-boards and ball finial, with a carved panel over the entrance arch. There is a steeply pitched roof with three large stacks, one to the right gable, one in the cross-passage position on the left of the porch and the third is a lateral stack behind the ridge on the left. The right return gable has a small window to either floor and a small modern lean-to.
The wing to the left has a 3-light window with arched heads on each floor facing north. The gable end facing east has two more windows with an additional 2-light one in the attic, moulded stone finial to gable. The south return has a 2-light one on either floors, and a large external stack with two circular Victorian shafts, with a C20 single storey wing projection. Behind the added wing the main house has three more modern casements, two on the first floor and one above.
The ground floor rear elevation to the west is mostly hidden by a c2000 lean-to kitchen extension and conservatory. There is one modern 3-light window to the left above this, also a projecting stair turret beside the cross-passage door and a large lateral stack to the right. The rear of the wing has a small casement to each floor, the first floor one below the remains of an earlier drip mould.
References: John Newman, Gwent/Monmouthshire, The Buildings of Wales, Penguin Books, 2000, p573.
Sir Cyril Fox and Lord Raglan, Monmouthshire Houses, Merton Priory Press/National Museum of Wales, 2nd ed., 1994,Vol I, p107n, Vol II, p126.
Peter Smith, Houses of the Welsh Countryside, HMSO, 1975, Map 48a.
Geoff Ward, 21/10/2014, Source, CADW list description.
