Plas Whitchurch

Plas Whitchurch is a house of rendered or whitewashed rubble stone with slate roofs and 19th-century yellow brick chimneys. It comprises two storeys and a loft, planned as a long spine range with the original house positioned at the south end facing west, a southeast stair gable, a northwest added gabled wing, and a north service range with an outshut to the west and a facade to the east.

The west front displays a moulded stone eaves course with quarter-round moulding over a step, and the wall slopes out at its base. This elevation is a two-storey, four-window range with 12-pane sashes and a 20th-century door in the second bay; the ground floor left window is blank. A square brick chimney stands on the ridge to the left of the door, with a narrower brick stack at the south end. The northwest wing has a splayed base to its wall and one horned 12-pane sash on each floor in the rendered south return; the windowless rubble stone west end gable contains a narrow yellow brick stack. The south end gable of the main range has no windows, as does the east return to the left of the large projecting southeast stair gable, which has overhung verges, two storeys and a basement with a two-window range; the windows to the left are smaller.

The rear elevation of the main house, to the right of the ridge chimney, has two 9-pane sashes above and two inserted ground floor 12-pane sashes with rendered heads and concrete sills, one central to the windows above and the other to the right of the right window. The kitchen section to the right has no obvious straight joint; its sashes are set higher than those in the range to the left, comprising two 9-pane sashes over a 16-pane sash to the left and a shorter 6-pane sash to the right of a central plank door. Brick heads mark the ground floor openings, with slate sills. The north end gable has overhung verges, no windows, and a square brick stack. An outbuilding with asymmetrical roof slopes is attached to the north end of the rear outshut. The rear outshut itself has three windows and a door, all replaced in the mid-20th century with timber lintels. The outshut's south end abuts the north wall of the northwest wing of the main front.

Internally, the entrance hall backs onto a fireplace and contains fielded panelled doors. The rear stair gable features a fine earlier to mid-18th-century staircase with a closed string, heavy turned balusters, plain square newels, and a moulded thick rail. A fielded panelled door provides access to the understair space. Fielded panelling infills the space under the flights and to the dado in parts. Halfway up to the first floor, a 2-panel fielded panelled door on the south opens to a bathroom. The staircase comprises five flights in total. The room at the south end has a panelled dado and panelled doors with sunk panels of early 19th-century type, and a cupboard on the east wall. The room to the north of the entrance hall contains an infilled large fireplace and two covered beams. The northwest wing has partitions rather than solid walls dividing it from the main range on each floor, with a covered beam to each floor. The first floor features some fielded panelling to the partition along the spine corridor and rearranged panelling where a former single room has been subdivided. This room, to the north of the chimney breast, contains three oak beams with scroll stops to the chamfers and a fourth beam over the fireplace, with wide floor boards and modern infill to a deep fireplace. Some fielded-panelled doors serve the first floor. The stair gable has a 2-bay roof with curved feet to an oak truss and no collar. The loft contains two oak trusses to the northwest gable and, over the upper end, five pine big tie-beam trusses, possibly of the late 18th century.

The service range comprises a long kitchen room with ten rough-hewn joist-beams, slate flags, and a north end fireplace with a remarkable surviving wooden crane. A Coalbrookdale iron grate, supplied by T M Daniels of Cardigan around 1910, stands within the fireplace, alongside a massive oak beam. The rear outshut, formerly a dairy and now modernised as a kitchen, has a boarded three-sided roof to the first floor. The loft roof over the kitchen end is partly replaced in 20th-century pine. An oak plank partition between the service range and the main house stands at the foot of the loft ladder stairs, indicating no solid dividing wall at this point.