Penybenglog

Penybenglog is a house of early 18th-century origin, with alterations and extensions in the 19th and 20th centuries. The house is constructed of rubble stone with unpainted render, and has slate roofs, a north end stone stack, and a south end stack that was removed around 1946 when a pine-end was rebuilt. It is two storeys and has an attic, originally a regular five-window range, but the left bay is now obscured by an added wing to the northwest. A rear staircase wing is also present.

The west front has three eaves-breaking nine-pane sash windows within dormer gables featuring 19th-century fretted bargeboards. On the first floor, there are four original early 18th-century twelve-pane sash windows with thick glazing bars; the ground floor has three twelve-pane sashes, and a doorway in the second bay. The windows have 19th-century slate sills. The early 18th-century front door has unusual panelling consisting of four fielded panels with a diagonal cross. A mid-19th-century slated, gabled timber porch with bulbous columns and cusped bargeboards—the latter echoing the trusses within—is also present. To the left, a single-storey wing extends forward with a west end stone stack. The whitewashed west end has a plaque reading ‘J. Hughes Esq Rebuilt 1828 Wm Lewis Tenant’, which may refer to this wing. The west door is a significant survival, likely the reset main door of a 1623 house. It has a large oak lintel with ovolo moulding featuring run-out stops and incised panels with raised figures ‘16’ to the left, ‘GGM’ to the centre (for George and Mary Griffith), and ‘23’ to the right. The door frame is heavy oak with two ovolo mouldings and eroded, elaborately carved motifs at its feet, and it has a plank door. The whitewashed north side has mostly 20th-century windows and a loft door breaking the eaves, with the roof continuing as a lean-to against the main house’s north wall, and hipped at the northeast angle to join a rear outshut. The main house’s north gable has a loft light. The south end wall of the main house, rebuilt in 1946, is of red brick with tripartite sash windows to the upper floors and a canted bay below, having previously been windowless.

The rear roof to the right is an outshut, with a wall rebuilt in red brick, while the rear left has a 1946 brick chimney. The rear centre has a large gabled rubble stone stair projection with a six-pane sash above and a nine-pane fixed window below, and red brick at the northeast angle.

Inside, the hall and right room have been combined. There are panelled shutters, two-panel doors, and two beams. A large cellar, believed to be the remains of an earlier house, either of 1623 or earlier, was infilled in 1946, and some panelling with a shell-cupboard was also previously present. The ground floor left room has an ovolo-moulded beam, possibly 17th century, and a fireplace with a timber lintel. There is also a cupboard in a blocked window. The stair tower to the rear contains a fine early 18th-century dog-leg staircase with shallow treads, a closed string, turned balusters and square newels. The string has a round (pulvinated) moulding. Stone steps lead to the infilled cellar beneath the stair, and evidence of an earlier staircase is found underneath. The first floor has two-panel doors. The attic has pegged oak collar trusses; the collar in the left room is chamfered to curve.