Clydach Canal Cottage, 47 Hebron Road. The canal company acquired land to enable the upper water feeder from the River Clydach to pass obliquely under Hebron Road adjoining an old cottage. The walls of the front of this building are extremely thick, as much as 0.9m on the street wall, and of rubble-faced clay. The heavy quoining, roof-pitch and chimney of the first cottage are visible on the south-western elevation. This thatched building, may have been a former schoolhouse, which the Canal Company seem to have rented and then bought in 1834 when it was already known as the lock-keeper's house.1 At some date, perhaps early in the nineteenth century, the roof of the original cottage was raised and a secondary rear block was constructed using rubble masonry with thin, red-brick dressings. Purlins were tenoned into the principal rafters in the rebuilding, as in the Cae'r Lan Swansea Canal cottage of c.1810. During modernisation concrete were inserted over some of the rear openings and the front facade has been rendered. A canal lengthsman still lives on the premises.

Cottage at SN 6882 0111

1. British Waterways Estates, Gloucester, Deed 23298.