Pen-Y-Wern

Pen-Y-Wern is a farmhouse, now house, built around 1650, possibly incorporating earlier material, which was extended and aggrandized in 1747 by the Whittall family.

The house is constructed from coursed stone rubble with a roughcast rendered right-return, a slate roof (originally stone tiled), and brick stacks. It is of two-and-a-half storeys with a wet cellar.

The original structure followed a lobby-entry plan with a heated room to the right-hand side of the stack, an unheated room to the left-hand side, and a dairy at the right-hand end with a heated room (formerly the parlour) behind it. In 1747 the plan was significantly altered when a central doorway and staircase were created.

The principal elevation faces west across a courtyard. The right-hand section comprises a continuous outshut extension of 1747 which projects beyond the building line of the earlier 1650 section to the left. To the 1650 section there is a blocked lobby-entry doorway flanked, to both floors, by casement windows on the left-hand side and horned sashes on the right-hand side. The ground floor sash is of six-over-six panes whilst the first floor is of three-over-three panes. The 1747 outshut addition features a plank and batten door with two glazed lights, over which is a datestone inscribed '1747' with the initials 'W' (for the Whittall family) and 'WH' still partly discernible though partially de-laminated. To the right-hand side of the doorway are two casement windows of two lights. All windows to this elevation have timber lintels and stone sills, except the ground floor casement window to the 1650 section which has a replacement stone lintel. The left-hand return is blind whilst the right-hand return has fixed casement windows of two lights to the first floor and attic.

The rear elevation contains, at ground floor from left to right, a horned sash of six-over-six panes, a cross window, a plank and batten door, and a fixed casement window of two lights on the left-hand side. The first floor has a late twentieth-century horned sash of three-over-three panes on the right-hand side and a casement window of two lights also to the right-hand side. All windows have stone sills and wooden lintels; the doorway also has a wooden lintel.

Internally, a stone-flagged floor extends from the doorway through to the principal living area, formerly the heated room of the original lobby-entry plan. This contains a large stone-built inglenook fireplace with a large timber bressumer. Buried beneath the late twentieth-century hearth are 4 knives and 40 nails believed to represent the contents of a former witches bottle. Opposite the fireplace is the former seventeenth-century unheated room, which was divided into two separate rooms in the twentieth century. The room to the right-hand side of the fireplace has a plank and batten door. To the left-hand side, the original lobby-entry doorway was converted into a storage cupboard during the twentieth century. The second living area, formerly the parlour, shares a spine wall with the former dairy and contains an eighteenth-century fielded and panelled door and large timber floorboards. A twentieth-century kitchen now occupies the former dairy. All ground floor rooms contain large stop-chamfered ceiling beams.

A central staircase, created from re-used timber apparently in the original position, provides access to the first floor bedrooms, which have plank and batten doors, stop-chamfered ceiling beams, and large timber floorboards. The attic, accessed by a second original timber staircase, contains a roof structure predominantly of seventeenth-century date, comprising principal rafters with trenched purlins. Of three bays, the two end bays have curved wind braces whilst the central bay has long-passing braces, possibly representing re-used timbers from a late-medieval building. Most of the seventeenth-century timberwork displays shallow carpenters' marks. The common rafters are of machine-sawn timber, added during the twentieth century, along with some additional collars for strengthening.

A doorway underneath the ground-floor staircase provides access to stone steps leading down to a stone-lined wet cellar with a stone-flagged floor enclosed by a water-filled stone gully. To the west wall are two large stone steps leading up to a blocked doorway which originally provided direct access to the dairy. The floor over the cellar is carried on large chamfered beams, some showing evidence of previous use in the form of mortice holes and carpenters' marks.