Ty Fry

Ty Fry is a mid-17th-century gentry house of Grade II* importance. It is built of rubble masonry with large stones as quoins, and has a slate roof with tall rectangular chimney stacks with capping at the gables, these marking the extent of the original house. The building comprises two storeys and an attic, with a long principal range flanked by staircase and service wings at the rear.

The principal elevation faces an enclosed garden to the southeast. The original section contains eight windows, with a further two-window range added in-line to the left in the early 19th century. The original section has an entrance to the left of centre, featuring a six-panelled door with a moulded canopy, with three windows to its left and five to its right. All of these are 24-pane sashes with stone voussoir heads. Four hipped dormers with 16-pane sashes pierce the roof. The early 19th-century section has a tall ground storey with two long 15-pane sash windows to the ground floor; above is an attic storey with 9-pane sash windows in gabled dormers.

At the rear, the original main range has 24-pane sash windows to the first floor on either side of the staircase wing, and its 19th-century extension has ground-floor French windows. Both wings have mainly 24-pane sash windows in their southwest elevations; the service wing has a horizontally sliding sash window in a gabled dormer to the northwest. The staircase wing has flanking lean-to additions in the angles with the main range, fitted with similar 24-pane sash windows. The service wing has been extended by a single-storey outhouse against the northwest gable and is linked by a lean-to addition to a further service block (the dairy wing) running parallel to it. This wing is mainly rendered and has a rear doorway with a loft door above, together with an added lean-to garage at the gable end.

The layout of the 17th and 18th-century house survives with some modification. As originally built and extended in the early 18th century, it comprised a large central hall with a staircase opening from a rear wing, and two further heated rooms flanking the hall, with a service wing at the rear. The entrance is now into the hall, but originally opened alongside the hall-parlour partition. This partition was once removed but has since been reinstated. The dining room lies to the right of the hall, with a corridor behind it that is a later insertion. The hall has two chamfered cross-beams with scrolled stops, as does the parlour. The hall fireplace features a segmental pediment with reeded Ionic pilasters. In the tympanum is an achievement of arms, Cadrod Hardd (for Williams) impaling Llywarch ap Bran (for Hughes of Newborough). An archway to the staircase in the rear wall reinstates something like the original arrangement, which had been modified in the 19th century. The dining room has two rough cross-beams (presumably intended to be plastered originally), which continue across the corridor. Beyond the kitchen, the dairy has slate-lined walls and malting tiles to its floor. The 19th-century addition at the southwest comprises a high music room with panelled shutters to the windows, a decorative plaster cornice, and a fine fireplace with shouldered architrave.

At the rear of the hall, the original open-well staircase rises the entire height of the house, diminishing as it rises. It has square newels with ball finials and pendants, and turned balusters, with bolection moulded string and dado panelling. The lower room of the rear wing opens from the staircase landing, with a painted framed panel over the doorway on the staircase side and a plain chamfered beam. The room above is larger (accommodated by the diminishing well of the staircase) and has chamfered beams with bar-stops. The first floor has a long rear corridor with full wall panelling with dado and cornice to its inner side, and a massive chamfered beam with scrolled stops over the entrance to the staircase. All rooms have independent access from the corridor but are arranged as interconnecting pairs. Doors have fielded panels and moulded rails with deep moulded architraves. The southwest room is entered from the end of the corridor and has a heavier moulded architrave on a similar profile. Most rooms retain extensive wall panelling contemporary with that of the corridor, window shutters, bolection moulded plaster cornices, and cross-beams with scrolled stops in the principal rooms.

The attic storey reveals the two phases of construction. The hall and parlour end of the house is roofed with five collar trusses. Over the dining-room end, the two trusses have slightly cambered collars, and similar trusses appear in the rear kitchen wing.