Tower House including attached shop

This is a tower house with an attached shop, dating from the medieval period and featuring later alterations. The tower itself is constructed of rubble stonework with a stone slate roof, originally rising to a defensible parapet likely featuring machicolations and a paved wall walk, with walls 1.68 meters thick.

An attached two-storey rubble shop extension is located to the east, originally a lower lean-to with evidence of its former profile remaining on the left gable. The shop front is classical in style from the 19th century, with pilasters, a bracketed cornice decorated with anthemia, a central double-doored entrance with overlight, and two six-paned sash windows. A further two-storey and basement lean-to addition, built in the 19th century, adjoins the tower on the southwest side, rising directly from the river and featuring a rubble chimney stack, brick quoining, and various 19th-century windows. Access is provided by a shop front and door to the road, and a boarded door leading from the cellar to the river bank.

The upper portion of the medieval tower, set above the shop, includes a short, chamfered lancet window set off-centre, with remnants of machicolations to the right, and a gargoyle on the southwest side. The northwest side is partly obscured by an early 20th-century bank building, but retains a slightly projecting garderobe. The southeast elevation of the tower displays a small paned window to the top floor, a round-arched window on the intermediate floor, and a blocked doorway at ground level. An addition on the southwest side conceals a small lancet window on the first floor of the tower.

The tower’s interior features a fireplace in the southwest wall, concealed by a 19th-century carved surround in a Jacobean style. A lobby, located in the southeast wall thickness at the foot of the stairs, is lit by a small window. The stairs are constructed from stepped stone slabs, leading to a garderobe in the northwest wall and a low wall cupboard adjacent. The first floor displays two opposing, off-centre, half-round corbels that once supported a floor beam. A second wall stair commences from the southeast wall window embrasure, leading to the top floor with a high ceiling. This stair continues up to the former parapet walk. A wall fireplace on this floor accommodates a 0.7-meter thick megalithic lintel, and a second window is situated on the northwest side, providing access to another garderobe. A late 20th-century replacement roof structure now covers the original.

The cellar, accessible by wall stairs, contains the remains of a stone-built oven on the southwest wall, and an opening leading to a 19th-century kitchen in the southwest extension. Local tradition suggests the existence of underground passages connecting the tower to Talgarth Church, Bronllys Castle, and Cardiff.