Pen-castell

Small farmhouse with remains of attached cow-house at lower end. Single storey and attic, a small 2-unit plan. Local quarried stone, roughly coursed. Slate roof with single stack at lower gable. Lobby entry plan with doorway against the stack, and two windows beyond, both 2-light casement windows with iron-glazing bars. Framed dormer within the roof. Attached at the lower end of the house is the former cow-house, now roofless, but with a single doorway alongside the entrance to the house. In here, the gable end of the house reveals significant evidence of its early history, including the blocked doorway of the C17 long-house which gave direct entry from house to cow-house, and the scarring of a former cruck truss: there is a section of tie-beam at the back of the chimney, morticed for a king stud, whose vertical scar is clearly visible in the gable apex. In the rear elevation, there is evidence of several phases of masonry, including substantial elements of C17 work using thin slabs of stone.

The interior arrangement is largely the result of early C19 remodelling: to this period belongs the plan which comprises kitchen and two inner rooms, one of which contains the ladder stairs to the loft; internal timber-work is also largely of this period, including the horizontal boarded partition between kitchen and inner rooms, and the roof timbers. The fireplace, however, retains a beam of c1600, though the original opening was reduced by the insertion of a bread oven in the C19. The attached cow-house retains the remains of a manger against its lower wall, with tethering irons and chains.