Blaengavenny Farmhouse

Blaengavenny Farmhouse

A 17th-century farmhouse built of Pennant and red sandstone rubble with a concrete tile roof. The building comprises a one-storey and attic hall range with a two-storey crosswing. The entrance front faces four bays and displays a 2-light stone mullioned window serving the inner room, a 3-light window with wooden frame, mullion and transom to the hall (set with a concrete lintel), and a gabled porch projecting before a studded oak door in an oak frame. Evidence in the walling shows an earlier stone mullioned window on the left, which Fox and Raglan interpreted as a 4-light window on either side of a king mullion. The porch bears a datestone of 1621. The studded door shows signs of having been rehung and may originally have served as the passage to hall door. A modern 3-light wooden framed window sits in the gable to the right. The attic includes one gabled dormer with a casement window positioned over the hall window, a later insertion, likely from 1621, though it has since been reconstructed. The crosswing's first floor has a similar window arrangement. Bargeboards ornament both gables.

Three stacks characterise the external walls: an external gable end stack to the left, a hall stack backing onto the cross-passage, and a lateral stack to the right serving the crosswing. The left gable end has a probably added stack for the ground floor inner room, flanked by modern single-light windows in chamfered 17th-century surrounds (lighting the attic and the floor below). Below these sits an original chamfered window with mortices for an iron grille. The right gable has a partly rendered side elevation with one window below and two above; these are modern timber casements set in altered openings. The large stack is set within a gable continuing the main ridge and is weathered for thatch.

The rear elevation is partly obscured by a later lean-to. A blocked 2-light stone mullioned window opening into the old hall is visible. The rear door of the cross passage has been altered, and a semi-open corridor now connects the house to the former kitchen, now an outhouse and granary.

The interior is entered through a cross-passage with the hall door on the left (altered). The hall features a post and panel screen with doorways surviving at both ends—the left having a shaped head and the right a pointed head. A large fireplace with chamfered stone surround dominates the space. The ceiling beams display bar-and-runout stops. The inner room contains a fireplace with monolithic jambs and lintel. Evidence for a 'solar' is somewhat contradictory given the two doors in the screen and the fireplace, though Fox and Raglan's plan shows only one door in the screen. The 1621 crosswing also has beams with bar-and-runout stops, suggesting the first floor of the hall was added at the same time.

A fireplace stair in the hall provides access to the upper floor. The open hall roof is retained, featuring well-finished chamfered arch braced collar beam trusses with a wall plate and three tiers of purlins; the roof apex is ceiled and cannot be seen. The roof spans four bays, one of which is walled off to form an inner room. The timbers, though heavily varnished, show smoke blackening from the open fire in use from approximately 1500 to 1621. The crosswing contains an oak staircase beside the lateral stack, topped by an L-shaped section of early 18th-century turned balusters with handrail. The crosswing roof is of principal rafter construction with ties cut to form brackets; mortices for ties at a higher level also survive.