Plas Rhiwaedog

Gentry house of 2 and 3 storeys with attics, irregularly planned. Roughly T-shaped with an advanced wing to L (E) and storeyed porch offset to L end of the main range. To the front of the house there is a walled garden with entrance through a gatehouse offset to NNW of the storeyed porch, and there is an agricultural range at an angle to the NW corner of the house. The house is now attached to the adjacent farmhouse by a C20 single storey brick built block. Built of roughly coursed masonry, slate roof with advanced eaves and verges; shaped kneelers to the porch roof. Tall stacks with dripstones and capping, some advanced. Entrance is through a storeyed porch with large segmental stone doorway, datestone above (said, in Williams leaflet on the 'History of Rhiwaedog' to bear the date and initials: L LI S / 1664 - Ll refers to Llwydiaid (Lloyds)). Windows are predominantly casements, some with ovolo moulded mullions, some with hoodmoulds and some with leaded lights. There is a rooflight in the front (N) roof pitch and the windows at the N gable of the advanced E wing are irregularly placed; the eastern elevation has gabled dormers. The agricultural range at the SW corner of the main house is a lofted cartshed, probably C19, of rubble masonry with a slate roof with rough stone kneelers and brick stack at southern gable.

The interior could not be inspected at the time of the survey (June 2004), but the plan of the ground floor of the house is illustrated in the RCAHM Inventory of Merioneth, 1921 and shows the porch entrance leading into a large hall with staircase to rear (SE). A drawing room occupies the rear (S) wing and the kitchen is housed in the advanced wing to L (E). The Inventory also describes a 'good C17 oak staircase with turned balusters'. P Smith records several interior features of particular note in Houses of the Welsh Countryside, namely: windbraces and cusped trusses in the main range of the house, post and panel partitioning with double ogee doorheads and a fireplace that bears the date 1699. William's leaflet - 'The History of Rhiwaedog' records that 'the internal partitions are adorned with various carvings and comprise the Coats of Arms of Owain Gwynedd and Rhirid Flaid'. Also that 'the underground cells have walls fifteen feet thick. There was a subterrranean passage from the mansion under the neighbouring hill which served as a place of refuge during attacks upon the homestead. There was also until quite recently a well of water in the cellar within the house'.