Tan y ffordd

Tan y ffordd

A large two-storey square-plan house of roughly coursed stone under a hipped slate roof, forming part of a group with Cemmaes Bychan. The house is dominated by a large central stone chimney stack with four shafts linked by a continuous capstone and weather-coursing.

The east-facing front is irregular with three windows and a porch to the right of centre, which forms the entrance to Tan y ffordd. The porch is a Victorian addition with a steeply-pitched lean-to roof featuring a central narrow gable with decorative barge boards, tile cresting and finial. A cusped archway runs under the gable, flanked by narrow three-light windows with coloured glass. To the right of the porch is a large two-light small-pane casement under a substantial timber lintel. At the far left is a tripartite horned sash also under a timber lintel. The upper storey contains three sixteen-pane hornless sashes rising to the eaves, with two grouped together on the left side.

The south side contains the entrance to Cemmaes Bychan, with a twentieth-century half-glazed lean-to porch to the left and a door at its east end. A three-light window sits on the south side of this porch. Immediately to its right is a four-pane horned sash with timber lintel and stone sill. Two windows align above: a twentieth-century top-hung window on the left and a sixteen-pane horned sash on the right. Evidence of a blocked ground-floor window remains to the left of the porch, in the position of the stairs, which had a narrow slate sill.

The west side has a twentieth-century rear door left of centre leading to Cemmaes Bychan, with rendered reveals and a moulded hood. Immediately to its left is a late twentieth-century wooden window. At the centre of the elevation is a two-light small-pane casement window with a long timber lintel, with a small-pane late twentieth-century window above. At the far right is a tall small-pane window lighting the stairs. A single-storey rendered lean-to block sits immediately to its left, with a planked door and two-light casement on the north side and a twentieth-century window on the south side.

The north side has a large late twentieth-century flat-roofed ground-floor extension of yellow brick and stone. Its basement is formed by an earlier range of rubble stone with a boarded door at the centre, flanked by late twentieth-century windows. Above the extension, the upper storey is slate-hung with three large late twentieth-century windows.

Interior

Although the original central entrance is now blocked, the entrance to Tan y ffordd on the right side leads into the original entrance hall, now functioning as a stair-hall with a timber staircase of probable nineteenth to twentieth-century date. The room retains good seventeenth-century panelling and a fireplace to the rear, cut into the side of the original back-to-back chimney. Long heated reception rooms originally flanked the entrance hall on each side. The room to the right, along the east side of the house, has a ceiling with boxed-in cross-beams but is otherwise modernised. The room to the left, along the west side, retains good seventeenth-century wooden panelling and one boxed-in beam to the ceiling. An early twentieth-century small marble fireplace surrounded by contemporary panelling obscures the larger seventeenth-century fireplace. To the right of the fireplace is a seventeenth-century panelled door which originally led to the entrance hall. On the south wall is an early blocked window, no longer visible from outside.

The original seventeenth-century dog-leg staircase occupies the south-west corner of the house and features a plain handrail, turned newels with finials and some original timber treads. A planked door under the stairs leads down to a coal store, possibly a former cellar, with a box-framed wall. Adjacent to the staircase in the south wall is the current entrance to Cemmaes Bychan. The entrance passage leads to a service room containing a rayburn with its flue linked into the north side of the central chimney, and two shallow stop-chamfered ceiling beams. A kitchen lies beyond.

The first floor (visible in Cemmaes Bychan) retains good seventeenth-century panelling and box-panelled partitions, with cross-beams and spine-beams featuring cut and ogee stops. The staircase continues to the attic from the current bathroom. In the attic, the large central chimney is strapped by substantial pegged timbers supported by a pyramidal structure of horizontal beams attached to the rafters, all part of the early seventeenth-century construction. Box-framed partitions are also present here, some with wattle and daub infill.