This late medieval building ‘lies within the medieval deer park of the bishop’s palace at Lamphey. It is similar to a number of small two-storey late medieval stone buildings surviving in Pembrokeshire: at Carswell (NPRN 21716), West Tarr (NPRN 30417), West Trewent and East Trewent Farms.’ Originally a house, the building (with early nineteenth and twentieth century alterations) now serves as a calf shed which forms the ‘north end of a barn at the north west end of the farm complex.’
The building has a rectangular shape, measuring about 5m north-south by 4.5m east-west. There is a ‘small square stair tower at the south west corner.’
According to Cadw it is built of rubble limestone with some external render and has a corrugated iron roof covering. The west elevation has a nineteenth century door under a flat brick arch. The north elevation shows a projection chimney stack and corbel at the eaves. The interior has a gabled north wall with a blocked doorway under a wooden lintel to the left-hand side of the ground floor and a blocked reveal of a slot window to the right. There is another blocked doorway (perhaps the original entrance) alongside a fireplace with quarter round and filleted corbels and a chamfered stone linter; there is a rectangular recess alongside this fireplace. The west wall has the nineteenth century doorway to the right and a blocked doorway in the south-west corner leading to the remains of a stone spiral staircase; this opens into the first floor via a partly blocked doorway above. A corbel carries the first floor, and there is a blocked window on the first floor to the right. The south wall on the ground floor has a fireplace with a segmental stone arch, now blocked, with a small slot window with splayed reveal to the left. The wall is cut back to take the staircase doorway and there is a corbel above to carry the floor. There is a possible blocked doorway on the first floor (but it might be a nineteenth century insertion to an adjacent barn). There is a corbel to carry the central roof truss at the midpoint of the top wall. The floor is now concrete and there are possible nineteenth pegged roof trusted.
The building is Grade II* listed as a rare example of this regional medieval house type.
Paul Davis notes that it was first recorded by D. Austin in 1994, but it appears as a background detail in the Buck engraving of Lamphey Palace (1740)
Sources: Cadw Listed Building database (ref no 15663) and notes by Paul Davis
M. Ryder, RCAHMW, 13 May 2021