Old Gwernyfed

Old Gwernyfed is a Grade I listed house of 'E'-plan, built in rubble sandstone with partial rendering and a slate roof. It comprises two storeys with attics throughout, arranged symmetrically with a two-storey gabled projecting central porch, wide gables on either side, and inward-facing gables on the wings. Both wings are gabled to the front and carry large external lateral stacks with diagonally placed brick flues.

The entrance porch features an arch from the early 13th century, comprising nook shafts with shaft rings and scalloped capitals, and a quarter-round inner order. The arch has been reset to form a depressed two-centred arch, with the outer order a continuous bowtell stopping before the springing and a chamfered hood mould rising from chamfered impost blocks. Within the porch are side seats and a flagged floor. The inner doorway is ogee-moulded in Tudor style with moulding stops enlivened with potted plants. The door itself is a studded four-plank panelled oak door with vertical cover strips and contains a wicket door. The porch has a joisted and plastered ceiling.

On either side of the porch are three- and four-light mullioned stone windows with labels at ground and first floors, with similar windows in the large gables now blocked. All windows feature hollow chamfered mullions and surrounds with relieving arches. To the right bay is an early 18th-century rusticated doorcase providing secondary access. The wings also have stone mullioned windows with labels. On the right wing is a 16th-century door with carved spandrels, the mouldings stopped as on the front door, with a narrow cellar beneath.

The rear has three gables with variously placed two-, three- and five-light mullioned windows. The stack to the service room has been removed, and the rear (north-west) wall of the parlour wing has been demolished.

The cross passage contains a timber screen to the hall comprising fluted wood columns with capitals featuring a cavetto and egg-and-dart top member forming five bays. The centre bay was probably the original opening to the hall, now replaced by a fielded-panelled door at the rear end. The capitals bear a cryptic inscription, interpreted as "Beware to whom thou does disclose - the secret of the wooden poles. In future wiser then before, according to their kind ignore". The 'poles' are now infilled with 17th-century panelling, reeded at the top. Within the great hall, the columns carry a deep moulded cornice, square panelling and an open gallery of twisted balusters with a moulded cornice. The hall has a large stone fireplace on the rear wall with panelling brought from the first floor chamber, and a thin-ribbed geometrical plaster ceiling with leaves, now lost over the south-west two-thirds of the room. The south-west end wall, erected after 1780, cuts across a doorway on the rear elevation.

The room to the right of the cross passage contains 17th-century panelling around the fireplace, now ex-situ. The rear room of the north-east service wing contains the kitchen with a large fireplace featuring a wide three-centred voussoir arch. A narrow spiral stair in the end passage against the service wing provides access to the first floor. The chamber over the porch has a shaped doorhead and square dome ceiling, with further panelling in the 'Fairfax' bedroom. The chamber above the original kitchen, now the dining room, has a bolection moulded fireplace dated 1680, now not visible.

The great chamber over the hall, now the 'Tudor' bedroom, contains surviving wall painting from the 17th century showing an interlacing trail with rosettes at the junctions, and fragments of a moulded plaster ceiling.

The roof over the hall range comprises eight bays, with the end bay shortened during rebuilding circa 1780. The trusses are of late medieval date, probably 15th century. Three trusses at the parlour end are originally smoke-blackened, with trefoil cusping above the missing collar and cusping and mortices with eleven pegs for elaborate carpentry below. They are numbered I to VII from the service wing. The principal rafters, approximately 35 centimetres in scantling, are butted at the apex, slightly cranked at low level, and trenched for two tiers of purlins. Windbraces, probably also cusped, extended above and below the purlins for the four bays over the hall at the south-west end. The decorative carpentry was removed, probably during the early 17th-century conversion or later to provide attic accommodation; two stone chamfered fireplaces survive. The service wing has similar trusses but they are tenoned and pegged at the apex and carry three tiers of purlins.