Plas Canol

Plas Canol is a substantial house of mixed dates, comprising an original range running across the slope and oriented east to west, with an eighteenth-century range at right angles facing west.

The original range is of rubble construction with lower boulder courses and a slightly projecting stone wall-plate. It has a random slate roof, grouted on the south-facing slope, with a coped east gable and moulded kneelers. A chimney at this gable end is slightly corbelled out at first floor and has an eroded moulded capping with drip-stones. The range is two storeys, with its main elevation facing north. A doorway with a nineteenth-century lean-to porch stands at the angle with the later range. To the left of this doorway are two sash windows lighting the hall, each of twelve panes with additional upper lights in the left-hand window. Three upper windows follow: twelve-pane, four-pane, and sixteen-pane sashes. A straight-joint between the two left-hand windows may relate to earlier fenestration or reconstruction of this external wall. The rear elevation is partially obscured by a later, probably nineteenth-century, lean-to. Above this is a small-paned horizontal sliding sash window lighting the stairs to the west, with a transomed small-paned window to its right, and a twelve-pane sash in a gabled dormer beyond.

The eighteenth-century parlour block is also rubble-built with a slate roof. Tall chimneys with moulded caps stand at each gable end. The block is two storeys with an attic storey, arranged as a three-window range symmetrically about a central doorway. The doorway is glazed and set in a late nineteenth-century timber gabled porch, flanked by twelve-pane sash windows with margin-lights. The outer first-floor windows are late nineteenth-century oriels with paired four-pane sashes, while the central window is a twelve-pane sash. The attic storey, the result of a nineteenth-century alteration to the roof pitch, has low six-pane sash windows. A small conservatory is attached at the north side.

The doorway leads into the original cross-passage, with a two-bay hall, latterly the kitchen, to its left. The post-and-panel passage partition is complete, including a disused doorway with an ogee head and a plank-door with reed moulding. The present doorway has an arched head but is a later insertion. The hall has a large fireplace at the upper gable with a massive timber bressumer and a ceiling beam against the chimney. A cupboard with a fielded panelled door stands to the left of the fireplace. The ceiling is heavily framed with broad stop-chamfered joists, divided laterally by a stop-chamfered cross-beam, puzzlingly morticed as if for another partition. On the passage side of this cross-beam, the ceiling has longitudinal beams, centrally and against the walls, all enriched by continuous roll-moulding with counter-changing joists. This decorative scheme is repeated in the cross-passage. Fragments of a further partition on the lower side of the cross-passage are visible behind the staircase, which is of dog-leg form with square newels, a moulded rail, and turned balusters. It rises through two storeys to the attic. A lintel of a probable former rear doorway is visible in the wall behind the staircase.

The parlour wing has a two-room plan and appears at some time, perhaps originally, to have had a central hall, of which a tiled nineteenth-century floor survives. The larger room has little surviving detail, but the smaller parlour retains substantial elements of its original eighteenth-century decorative scheme. The fireplace wall is fully panelled with lying panels below a dado and large panels above, all raised and fielded, with a modilion cornice. An integral cupboard stands to the right of the later Adam-style fireplace. A probably contemporary round-arched niche cupboard in the east wall has reeded framing to its architrave, to one side of a recessed canted alcove, at the back of which the earlier post-and-panel partition can still be seen. Panelling in the alcove is inconsistent, suggesting alteration at this end of the room. The west and north walls have horizontal boarded panelling of later nineteenth-century character.

At first floor, the original layout of the early range has been altered, but in the central bay a ceiling of early type with chamfered joists survives, as does part of a post-and-panel partition separating this bay from the eastern-most room. The partition has been interrupted to the north in this room, and a three-bay eighteenth-century press has been inserted. An archway with moulded plaster-work divides the early range from the later parlour block. One bedroom in this range retains another fine Adam-style fireplace.

In the attic storey, most of the early roof structure of the hall-range is visible. One fine arch-braced collar truss, moulded and ornately cusped, is aligned over the partition between hall and passage, with wind-bracing in the central bay. The truss beyond, over the centre of the hall, is of simpler type, and the first-floor partition appears to be pegged into it. The end bay is not visible. In the parlour wing, the original roof is also visible: three bays with heavy collar-trusses, modified to the front slope in the nineteenth century, and post-and-panel partitions.