Gwaenynog

Gwaenynog

Gwaenynog is an extensive two-storey country house with a complex and irregular plan. The primary hall-house was extended to the west in the mid-18th century, at which time the south, park-facing elevation became the principal front. The entire building was Gothicised during a Victorian re-casing, and various additions were made to the north and northwest both then and in the early 20th century. The construction is of limestone, partly encasing a timber-framed, E-shaped core, with slate roofs and plain end and central chimneys.

Entrance Front and East Elevation

The entrance front faces east and contains the primary house. It features a storeyed and gabled porch with flanking four-light wooden mullioned windows and advanced wings beyond, partly enclosing a medium-sized entrance court. Late 19th-century plain sashes are used throughout. The porch has a rendered upper stage with a three-light window and a 19th-century Tudor-arched entrance with panelled doors. The right-hand return has three windows with modern multi-pane French doors to the gable end. The left-hand return has a re-used lead hopper to a 19th-century downpipe bearing the date 1764 and the initials I.M (for Colonel John Myddleton).

This left-hand advanced wing was probably originally a parlour wing and was converted into a full-height dining room in the 18th century. A balancing drawing room was placed on the other side of the stairwell, thereby creating a new lengthened garden elevation to the south.

South Garden Elevation

The south elevation is near-symmetrical and has large, full-height canted bay windows at each end, flanking a middle section with a central gabled stairwell bay. The canted bays have plain-glazed cross-windows with arched lights and returned labels, topped by crenellated stone parapets. The two-storey central section has a pierced quatrefoil parapet, with two cross-windows to the left and a single cross-window to the right of the central bay. The upper floor has two two-light windows on each side with early 20th-century blind boxes. The central bay has an entrance to the left with a linenfold panelled garden door featuring pierced tracery upper lights. Above this is a large four-light transmullioned stair-light with a corbelled sill; this replaces an 18th-century Venetian window known to have occupied this position. In the gable apex is an heraldic cartouche within a moulded panel. On the left gable end is a stone plaque with raised figures and letters reading: "I M M 1777 Restored 1882 O & AB", with blind flanking cross-loops.

North Range and Service Areas

A long, mostly 19th-century north range extends as a parallel wing behind the south front, with a sunken topiary garden in between. This wing has paired sashes in shallow corbelled oriels to the upper floor with blind boxes as before. The ground floor has arched-light cross-windows, one altered to form a modern multi-pane French window, and to the right a large 20th-century bow window. This wing returns to the north to form a further contemporary Z-plan range with similar windows and plain gables.

The north side faces a large, irregular service court with a walled garden divided off to the left, behind a C-shaped section with projecting gabled wings (the right-hand wing, containing the 'Evidence Room', is of brick). There are three entrances to the central section; the middle one has a bracketed and gabled canopy with decorative bargeboards and a finial, and boarded doors. The right-hand entrance faces east and is in the centre of a further projecting wing which has a storeyed extruded bay in its angle with the main range. This section has single sashes and some small-pane casement windows, one to the ground floor of the extruded bay with an arched head, and a bracketed canopy porch to the latter entrance.

Projecting northwards to the far right is a long, six-bay, single-storey service block with 16-pane unhorned sashes and a 20th-century part-glazed entrance to the fourth bay. This returns to the east in a one-and-a-half-storey former coachhouse block. This has two 20th-century boarded garage doors with flanking boarded entrances and three 12-pane sashes to the upper floor, breaking the eaves and contained within gabled dormers with pierced bargeboards and geometric finials. The east gable has deep verges with a finial.

Tudor Arch and Boundary Wall

Adjoining the northwest wing (the right-hand advanced, L-shaped wing on the entrance front) is a high rubble wall which extends northwards for some 15 metres at a height of up to 3.5 metres. This has a four-bay lean-to cart-house addition to its rear and features a wide, chamfered Tudor arch spanning the drive which leads around to the rear service court. The arch is late 19th-century and is surmounted by a crenellated parapet, with a further pedestrian arch to its left. The wall continues to the right for a short distance before terminating.

Interior: Principal Rooms

The hall, in the primary range, has a ceiling framed in three ways with moulded plasterwork including Rococo foliate groups. It contains a good 1760s fireplace with consoles flanking a classical frieze with the motto "Duw a Digon.." painted onto the projecting central section, and a moulded cornice. Above the fireplace is a fine trophy group in relief plasterwork with cannons, swords and other militaria flanking a central cartouche with the Myddleton arms. An 1870s inner fireplace of limestone features a Flamboyant-style Gothic basket arch with cotton plant relief carving and brass repoussé panels within.

Leading off from the hall is a panelled sitting room with re-sited first-half 17th-century small-field oak panelling (painted). It has three 18th-century segmental arches and a 19th-century Tudor-style limestone fireplace with an overmantel made up of re-used Elizabethan panels, featuring fine foliate, geometric and heraldic inlay of bog oak and holly.

The former dining room (now the billiard room) has a high ceiling with very fine Rococo plasterwork, including a complex foliate cornice and leaf-scroll frieze (modern gilding), and a large-field panelled dado. The contemporary fireplace is of white figured marble with black marble Ionic columns and a yellow figured marble frieze, topped by a moulded cornice.

The former drawing room (music room) has a very fine Adam-style plaster ceiling with reliefs of female Muses in medallions and a dentilated cornice. The Adam fireplace is of white and yellow-brown figured marble, with a relief plaque to the centre of the frieze depicting a horn and lyre with sheet music contained within a swag, and a contemporary steel and brass grate. Additional Adam-style plasterwork below the frieze dates from post-1914 and is by Waring & Gillow.

The principal rooms have lugged and moulded architraves with fine six-panel mahogany doors.

Staircase and First Floor

The narrow well staircase, off the hall, is a particularly fine example from the 1760s, constructed of oak with a beech (or similar) rail. It has fine fluted balusters, a moulded and swept rail, Ionic fluted columnar newels, and pierced, foliate tread-ends. The walls have lugged plaster frames and the stairwell has a coved ceiling with a modillion cornice and Rococo plasterwork centrepiece. At the first floor the stair rail curves around to form a balustraded gallery landing.

The ceiling heights on this floor are mostly low, and moulded plaster beams in some rooms are suggestive of the Tudor structure. In a first-floor former sitting room, however, is a high coved ceiling with exceptionally fine Rococo plasterwork, having stalks and foliate forms cut in the round, together with a moulded egg-and-dart cornice and lugged architraves with six-panel doors. In another first-floor chamber is an 18th-century stone fireplace with primitive relief-carved hand motif, together with contemporary plasterwork cornicing and a two-panel fielded door.

Beyond this is a monument room called the 'Evidence Room'. This has a heavy full-height safe door with a painted pastoral scene including a Muse figure with an urn, and bears the date 1784 together with the room's name painted upon it in contemporary hand. The room itself has a brick vault.

Service Areas and Roof Structure

The kitchen has two wide segmental fireplace arches, one with a central keystone inscribed with the date 1762. On one wall is a large, contemporary, built-in tripartite dresser with fielded oak panels. In a room off the kitchen is an ex-situ date plaque of 1571.

The four-bay arched-braced collar trusses of the former open hall are partly visible in the attics and are, unusually, double-pegged. Over the dining room is a two-bay arched-braced collar truss roof with raking struts above the collar and chamfered braces. It is possible that this was originally the open roof of the first-floor solar of the primary hall-house.