Plas Mawr

Plas Mawr is an Elizabethan town house built in stages between the 1570s and 1585. It comprises a gatehouse facing High Street, behind which lies a lower courtyard with steps leading up to the main house, which originally faced Crown Lane. The rubble-stone walls are lime rendered, though freestone dressings remain exposed. Steep slate roofs rest on a cornice and corbel table. A distinctive feature throughout is the use of crow-stepped gables on moulded kneelers, incorporating diagonally-set apex pinnacles. Windows have stone mullions and transoms, many renewed, with diamond-leaded glazing. Doorways generally feature continuous mouldings and hood moulds.

The Gatehouse

The gatehouse, distinguished from the earlier main house by its marked Renaissance influence, is two storeys and attic with a symmetrical three-bay front to High Street. The central projecting porch has a higher eaves line than the main gatehouse. Rebuilt stone steps lead to an entrance with a freestone surround featuring an elliptical arch with keystone and spandrels bearing shields with raised eagle and stag's heads. The iron gates are 20th-century. Above is a tablet with the Garter arms held aloft by a lion and dragon (symbolising England and Wales), framed by Tuscan pilasters and pediment, the cornice of which is carried over the crown of the Royal Garter. Inside the porch is an elliptical arch with two orders of chamfer, capitals with foliage spandrels, and faceted keystone and capitals. The pediment is inscribed, some of it weathered, with Robert Wynn's motto ('bear: forbear') in Greek and Latin. The studded boarded door has strap hinges, with a secondary door cut in between the hinges. Side walls of the porch have transomed windows. On the first floor is a pedimented three-light transomed window with transomed side windows. The attic also has a three-light transomed window and single-light windows in the side walls. The outer bays have pedimented three-light transomed windows, shorter to the first floor. The attic has crow-stepped dormers treated similarly to the porch, with three-light windows, above which is a string course to the gable.

In the right gable end, facing Crown Lane, are pedimented three-light windows similar to the front. The attic has a string course below a shoulder-headed doorway, now boarded up, beneath a pediment. The rear is dominated by external lateral stacks with gables and tall shafts. In the central bay, above the elliptical passage arch, is a first-floor cross window. On the right side, where there is a raised terrace, is a first-floor entrance inserted in the 18th century, with studded door under a timber lintel.

The Main House

The main house faces Crown Lane on a sloping site that incorporates a basement in the bay (south wing) at the downhill end. It is two storeys with attic and has a near-symmetrical five-bay front. The end bays (the gable ends of the north and south wings) are brought forward, and the central bay has an 18th-century porch with a higher eaves line than the main house. The porch is whitened rubble-stone in the lower storey with a segmental arch and steel gates. Inside, the original entrance has an elliptical arch with continuous moulded chamfer, foliage spandrels, and weathered moulded cornice with central heraldic shield. It has a studded door with a secondary door cut in between strap hinges. In its left side wall is a small window. Above ground floor the porch is timber-framed in large panels. The first floor has paired wooden cross windows with single cross windows in the side walls, and the attic has a similar arrangement of shorter two-light windows.

The left-hand bay, at the downhill end, has a six-light transomed window to the ground floor, with a small transomed window in the right-hand return, and a two-light first-floor window. The attic has a round corbelled and transomed oriel window. In the basement is a segmental-headed doorway to a studded door with strap hinges, flanked by three-light mullioned windows with iron bars, in weathered moulded surrounds.

In the main range the bays flanking the porch have four-light transomed windows in ground and first floors, and two-light casement windows in gabled timber-framed dormers. The (earlier) right-hand bay has a corbelled and pedimented six-light transomed oriel window to the parlour. The pediment incorporates a raised shield, relief foliage and the inscription 'RWdG' (Robert Wynn and his wife Dorothy Griffith). The right-hand return has a transomed window, the left return a pedimented two-light oriel. The first floor has a similar six-light corbelled and pedimented oriel window, the pediment of which is dated 1576. The left-hand return has a two-light oriel and the right-hand a cross window under a weathered cornice. A round corbelled oriel is similar to the attic window in the left-hand bay.

The south-east elevation of the south wing, facing the lower courtyard, was built in 1580 but adapted to become the main entrance in 1585. It is two storeys and three bays, with four-light ovolo-moulded transomed windows. Upper right is an additional small two-light corbelled oriel window. The inserted entrance is left of centre. It has a four-centred arch with shields in the spandrels bearing the monogram RW in raised letters. The hood mould has blank shields above label stops. The hood is carried over a renewed tablet with shield bearing the date 1585 in raised numerals.

The rear of the main house faces the upper courtyard. It has doorways with basket arches and boarded doors with strap hinges. The two-window main range has a central entrance and cross windows. A central lateral stack has a tall shaft over a gable. To the right and left are polygonal stair turrets in the angles with the north and south wings. The right-hand (south) is higher, under a pyramidal roof with weathervane. In the ground floor is a doorway. Above are three tiers of stepped stair lights, and similar lights to a chamber at the top. The left-hand (north) turret also has a pyramidal roof and pinnacle. It has two tiers of three stepped stair lights, and lights around the upper landing.

The upper-courtyard elevation of the south wing has a doorway on the right. On the left side is a doorway with shields to the spandrels under a square hood mould. A single cross window is in each storey, including a gabled dormer. The upper-courtyard elevation of the north wing has an entrance on the right side. Windows are four-light transomed, of which the upper storey has RW in shields over the label stops. Upper left there is also a small window under a hood mould, and 1576 in shields over the label stops. The attic has a gabled dormer with cross window.

The north-west elevation of the north wing now faces a gallery. On the left side is an external parlour stack with tall stone shaft over a freestone moulded cornice. The attic has a central gabled dormer, offset left of centre, with cross window and string course above it.

The Courtyard

Between gatehouse and main block is the lower courtyard. Facing Crown Lane is a whitened rubble-stone courtyard wall with stepped freestone coping. It has a segmental-headed entrance with restored studded door, flanked by segmental-headed openings with wooden latticework behind which is studded boarding. The north-west side of the courtyard has a raised terrace in front of the main house, of rendered rubble stone and corbelled parapet. In the centre of the wall is a weathered stone tablet. Quarter-turn stone steps lead up from the lower level, with flanking coped walls. To the left of the steps is a tunnel-vaulted recess to a three-light basement window with unmoulded mullions. An 18th-century terrace on the south-west side of whitened rubble stone has three tunnel-vaulted recesses and a parapet with weathered stone coping.

The Interior

The interior is remarkably well preserved, and the original layout of the building can be reconstructed with confidence. The main house has an entrance passage leading to an axial corridor at the rear. On the ground floor the entrance range has a kitchen and pantry, the south wing a servants' hall and buttery, and the earlier north wing a parlour (in an awkward position after the extensions of 1580) and brewhouse. On the first floor the great chamber occupies the main range, Robert and Dorothy Wynn's private rooms the north wing, guest rooms the south wing, with servants' sleeping quarters in the attic. Both turrets have renewed wooden newel stairs. Many features are consistent throughout the interior, including gabled wooden door frames and post-and-panel partitions.

Main rooms are decorated with plaster, although the plasterwork of 1577 in the north wing is of a different character to the 1580 plasterwork in main range and south wing. The moulded cornices of the 1580 section of the house incorporate a frieze of ferns, and survive in the hall, great chamber and in the first floor of the south wing where the plaster ceilings have not survived. The most richly decorated rooms of the 1580 section of the house are the hall and great chamber, where the plasterwork has been repainted. In the great chamber is a lateral fireplace with marble chimney piece incorporating a corbelled lintel, and plaster overmantel with the Garter arms and monogram of Elizabeth I. Around the room is a frieze of cartoon-like caryatids below the cornice. The ribbed ceiling incorporates geometrical patterns, including ribs radiating from roundels that incorporate heraldic devices and one with 'RW 1580'. A doorway from the great chamber to the south stair has an 18th-century panel door in an enriched door frame.