Glyn Cywarch

Glyn Cywarch is a gentry house dated 1616, exhibiting Renaissance characteristics while retaining a sub-medieval tradition. It comprises a main range, linked by a rear wing to a parallel block to the rear (a secondary dwelling or dower house), with a nursery wing added in the 1870s to its rear. The construction is of mortared rubble masonry with sandstone dressings, and has slate roofs with coped gables and gable end and axial stacks.

The main range is two storeys high with attics. It is compactly arranged but exhibits sub-medieval asymmetry. The main elevation faces the gatehouse to the southeast. The doorway is positioned to the right of centre, within a four-centred archway featuring the date 1616 in the spandrels, and an armorial tablet displaying the arms of Osbwrn Wyddel and those attributed to Owain Gwynedd. Flanking the doorway are three-light ovolo-moulded mullioned and transomed windows with leaded panes (two to the left and one to the right on each floor). A two-light window sits above the doorway, and gabled dormers are unequally spaced across the roof, each containing a three-light mullioned window. Windows are present in each gable return; a sixteen-pane sash window is on the first floor to the right, with a small casement and a mullioned and transomed window to the ground floor. Sash windows are present on the ground and first floors in the left-hand gable. The original rear wing extends to the north, also featuring mullioned and transomed windows, alongside a later, shorter wing parallel to the south.

The former secondary dwelling runs parallel to the main range, offset to the rear. It is constructed in a similar style but is smaller, standing at a low two storeys. Its principal elevation faces west but is partially obscured by the later 19th-century wing. The most notable feature is a fine full-height bow window surmounted by a gable and containing mullioned lights. The original entrance is alongside this bow window to the left, in the angle with the later wing, and there are two axial stacks. The range was extended with a mono-pitched bay abutting the original rear wing of the main house. The 1870s wing is sympathetic in style to the original construction.

The original layout followed a regional sub-medieval pattern of a hall (originally with a lateral fireplace) and parlour in the main range; Renaissance influence is suggested by the placing of a well-stair and kitchen in a rear wing. While this layout is no longer intact, original detail of a high order related to this plan remains. Fine plasterwork overmantels are found in the parlour fireplace, featuring an armorial panel and flanking figures of Adam and Eve. Similarly enriched fireplaces are in first-floor chambers, also with plaster armorial panels as overmantels, dated 1638 and 1639. A fine Jacobean door, originally from Clenenney, has been reset leading from the front range to the rear kitchen wing. Panelling on the upper landing was brought from Penrhos Old Hall, Montgomeryshire.

In the former secondary dwelling, inscriptions painted by Ellis Wynn, third son of William and Kathryn, survive; one reads “E W his chambre …1664” and the other “Let me doe noe things Lord but what may tend to thy … glory and my end”.