Site Record

Brynmaenllwyd is a rubble-walled upland farmhouse of one-and-a-half storeys with agricultural buildings in range. The farmhouse is of Snowdonian type with the characteristic central doorway and end chimneys. The architectural detail is consistent with a C17th building date but the downslope siting with boulder footings suggest that the present house may be a reconstruction of an earlier range. This was confirmed by dendrochronology of the roof trusses. The principal rafters are of later seventeenth-century date but the trusses reused some late-sixteenth-century timbers (purlin and tie-beam). The fireplace beam was of uncertain date (after 1549) but may belong to the earlier phase. A third C19th phase of modernisation and addition is marked by a slate date inscription on the front elevation:H/W[superscript]/E 1889. R.F.Suggett/RCAHMW/July 2012

Summary of tree-ring dating by the Oxford Dendrochronology Laboratory:
Nine timbers were sampled from this property. Dendrochronology has identified two phases of work. Certainly, the house in its present form dates from the 1665, or within a year or two afterwards. However, the earlier group of timbers might suggest that the fireplace beam and the north end and south end tiebeam relate to an earlier phase of building dating from about 1588 which was then partly reconstructed in or shortly after 1665, reusing some timbers such as the purlin. ODL Report 2012/25. RFS/RCAHMW/Aug. 2012.