Barn/cow-house/stable range. Llanvetherine, Mons. SO36669 16397, NPRN 404683

The barn/cow-house/stable range is a stone-built range, situated parallel to the present road, consisting of a 6-bay corn-barn, and later C18/19th stable and cow-house with granary over having flatter pitched roof. The corn barn retains part of an early-C17th 3-bay timber-frame barn.
Enough early roof timbers survive within the later stone walls to indicate that, the earliest part, against the stable was an early-C17th, 3-bay, timber-framed corn barn with central threshing bay. Details in the roof timbers indicate it was extended in the late-C17th by three narrower timber-frame bays to the S-E. This part of the roof was altered again in the C18th when all the walls were re-built in stone with tall ventilation slits throughout, and the threshing bay moved to its present central position. The existing S-E gable-end (leaning) is not keyed into the side walls, indicating a framed end wall has been replaced in stone..
In the C18th a stone-built, lofted stable was built against the N-W gable-end of the barn with a central door and flanking windows to its road side. On the opposite side there was a doorway (blocked as window) by the barn gable-end, a small blocked window and a wide doorway (possibly for oxen?). In the mid-C19th a building was added in-line  at the N-W end, and the roof was raised, providing a cow–house and first-floor granary over, with external stone stairs. The stone stair blocks the small stable window which was reduced to a ventilation opening. The cow-house has a blocked doorway, formerly for cattle, on the S-W side against the stables former gable-end. There are presently two later brick arched gable-end doorways, which  recently provided a lateral feed-passage on the road side and a cattle entrance. Internally there are niche openings against the road wall and the gable-end wall of the stable has been removed with a C20th iron girder supporting the first-floor where the wall was. The other floor timbers are plain square oak transverse ceiling-beams and similar joists. At first-floor there are granary windows with shutters and mid-C19th oak roof-trusses, which have bolted lap-collars, 2 pairs of side-purlins and a diagonal set ridge-piece. 
The early C17th barn.is a 3-bay barn with raking strut tie-beam trusses to threshing-bay with end-trusses having tie-beam and raking-struts over collar. The wall-framing for each bay was three square-frames with diagonal brace from principal to wall-plate and we can surmise probably 3 square frames high. The end truss tie-beam has mortices for 5 square frames across, with braces from tie to principal posts. There are 3 pairs of trenched side-purlins and a diagonal ridge. The end-trusses are wind braced between the lower purlin and the wall-plate. The threshing-bay tie-beams have mortices for former down-braced to principles. Similarly the 

In the mid-C20th the whole range was converted for housing cattle by extending the feed-passage, breaking entrances through the barn end wall and providing concrete mangers, stalls, iron tethering divisions and a drain.

This building’s development is a good example of how farming changed from arable in the early-C17th to pastoral in the mid-C19th, until its demise in the late-C20th.

Visited, 2/3 August 2006, Geoff Ward, Buildings at Risk List, Mons.