Gwernfyda (also known as Gwern-y-Fedw) including attached barns

Gwernfyda (also known as Gwern-y-Fedw) is a Grade II* listed house with attached barns, featuring a lobby entry plan of 4 bays with 3 adjoining barns to the south-west. The building is one storey with an attic.

The house is weather boarded over well-preserved timber framing, with a visible masonry plinth at the north-east end. A large masonry stack stands opposite the front entrance and contains a modern door. The front range has 4 windows with 2 attic dormers that previously had catslide roofs. The windows are modern wooden 8-pane casements with fine glazing bars, fitted to original openings. To the rear is a stairlight, 2 further windows matching the front, and a rear planked door to the south-west. The north-east gable end has an attic window and a small ground-floor light. The roof is slated.

The interior contains a hall with outer rooms (now kitchen and bathroom) to the right of the entrance and inner rooms to the left. A further open bay extends beyond the inner rooms. Box framing is well preserved throughout. The smoke bay and entrance passage, originally on the right-hand side of the hall, have been replaced by the large chimney stack.

The hall contains significant medieval features. At the south-west end stands an oak post and panel partition on a masonry plinth with scratch and circle assembly marks—the original dais partition. Approximately 0.8 metres in front is a truss supporting the dais canopy, with an undecorated cross beam supported on two posts incorporated in the front and rear wall framing. A deeply chamfered V-section cross beam between the dais canopy and fireplace lintel is supported on carved jowled posts pegged to the external walls. The ceiling spine beam runs north-east from this truss with deep moulded chamfers and cut stops. Where it meets the central cross beam is a boss engraved with an owl with a human face. The position of the second cross beam relates to the entrance passage truss rather than the chimney front, suggesting the ceiling may be earlier than the chimney but certainly later than the dais partition and canopy. Subsidiary joists have moulded chamfers; those to the south-west have arrow stops.

The oak fireplace lintel is carved in relief with figures: a crucifixion, a 2-headed serpent, a hound chasing a stag, a phoenix, and two quatrefoils inside circles representing the four gospels. This is the only known lintel of its type to depict a crucifix. A simple wooden staircase located behind the chimney has a low landing with two flights rising to rooms on each side of the stack. The hall floor is laid with flagstones.

The inner room is divided by a box-framed partition, probably inserted to provide two service rooms, with a jowled post at the south-west end. The south-east room contains Victorian panelling. The north-west side now provides access to the additional room beyond.

The additional room's framing was built to match the rest of the house but appears later. Carpenters' marks on the upper side of wind braces run numerically from 1 to 8 (some braces missing in the smoke bay), indicating the original building extended 4 bays including a narrow smoke bay. The original gable end, well preserved within the fourth bay, is 5 panels wide and 3 panels high to tie beam level, with a collar beam above and vertical struts. The panel infill is wattle and daub, some painted.

In the outer rooms (kitchen and bathroom), the inserted ceiling has chamfered spine and cross beams with particularly well-executed ogee stops. A box-framed partition, now containing one blocked north-east doorway, divides the space.

The attic is open to the roof, constructed with 2 tiers of purlins and windbraces. The truss to the south-west of the chimney, possibly the original smoke bay truss, has a round-headed doorway cut into the tie beam, supported by a jowled post. Wall paintings remain on the beams and panels of this truss, consisting of zig-zags, triangles, circles and feathering in red paint. Some patterns may have been applied in relief to wet panels. Curvilinear painting has also been discovered on one hall wind brace.

Three attached barns stand to the south-west of the house, weather boarded to the front and masonry to the rear under corrugated tin roofs. All are one storey with hay loft above, varying in date. The central barn, probably the oldest, has 3 bays with substantial queen post trusses supported by jowled posts similar to those in the house, and a steeply pitched roof. To the north-east is a lightly constructed stables of 2 bays with hay loft above, built of larch poles. The south-west barn is one bay with pig sties beyond.