Vaynol Old Hall

Vaynol Old Hall is a substantial manor house built of local stone rubble with large quoins and freestone dressings, covered by slate roofs. The main range runs east to west and dates to the 16th century. It features a main hall with a lateral fireplace, a cross passage, and beyond that an inner room, possibly a parlour or service room. A three-storey rear wing, likely contemporary, extends eastward, containing service rooms on the ground floor.

A two-storey porch was added to the north side of the building. It features an open, outer, moulded Tudor arch within a square frame, with shields in the spandrels. The windows are generally two, three, or four-light, stone mullioned with rounded heads to the lights, set back in chamfered ashlar surrounds. A three-light window is visible in the porch gable. An oriel wing, likely added later, projects at the east end of the north elevation, featuring three-over-four-light windows with similar arched Tudor style. A balancing wing at the west end has crow-stepped copings, a four-light window on the ground floor and a stone mullioned cross window above. A stone stack sits between the porch and the oriel.

The east elevation, which overlooks a sunken garden, is three stories high, with a door to the undercroft in the large gable of the main block, containing five-over-four-light windows, along with similar windows to the rear wing. The oriel windows are not recessed. The building is four stories high, under two gables, and overlooks the stable yard, adjoining the Best Stables. Several windows and cross windows have been altered.

The inner arched doorway from the porch, with a chamfered oak frame and boarded door, decorated with flowers and foliage in the spandrels, opens directly into the great hall. This hall has bar-stopped chamfered ceiling beams forming eight compartments, with similar chamfered subsidiary joists. The hall is fully panelled with 17th-century square moulded panelling, originally from Vaynol Hall and restored in 1995. The original fireplace surround has been lost.

The cross passage leads to the rear wing, which contains a late 17th-century boxed stair with square oak newels rising to inverted urn finials and pendants, and closely set turned waisted balusters; this stair has been remodelled. The stair well is timber framed, with wattle and daub, and lath and daub infilling.

The three-bay great chamber, above the hall, comprises a stone fireplace with a joggled lintel, and an oriel with two-light windows. A timber-framed partition with a central pointed-arched door opening, with surviving lath and daub at its upper level, divides off the adjacent inner room. Approximately twelve surviving roof trusses throughout the building, including those over the hall block, have collars and raking struts to the principal rafters, and two tiers of purlins. The initials ‘TE 1831’ are inscribed on the plaster.

The cellars contain a rear chamber that served as the late 17th-century kitchen, with a large fireplace, now partly blocked, on the south end wall. A stone, chamfered doorway, of external type, leads from this room to the re-entrant angle below the later kitchen and stair, suggesting that the rear wing dates from the building’s initial phase.