Llanvihangel Court

Llanvihangel Court

This is a substantial country house of mixed date, primarily of 1599 but with significant surviving elements from the late medieval or early Tudor period. The exterior is constructed of red and brown sandstone rubble with freestone dressings, with stone tile roofs throughout. The stair tower is now painted, though the entire building was presumably once rendered and lime-washed. The building comprises a large irregular L-shaped block of two storeys with attics, facing north-east, with a large service wing attached at the north-west corner. This wing is partly full height and partly two storeys only. The inner angle of the L was later infilled by a stair tower around 1673.

The entrance front is built to a standard pattern for 1599 with a recessed centre and projecting wings either side. It displays a 2:2:2 window arrangement, with the wings having double gables—the inner ones narrower but the same height with flat copings and kneelers. All ground floor windows and those on the first floor of the wings are cross-framed casements with ovolo mouldings, 2-light with 4 panes over 8. The centre windows on the first floor are 4 over 4 to accommodate the higher ceiling of the hall. The gable windows are 8+8 casements. A central hipped dormer has an 18+18 casement with a notably Arts-and-Crafts appearance, though it appears in a painting dating from around 1680. The central doorway is an Arnold alteration from around 1630; the original 1599 doorway can be seen blocked in the right-hand wing, though the present doors appear to be early twentieth-century reproduction.

The garden front dates from 1599 and features three equal gables over a string course with a 2+2 window arrangement and a gap as wide as the central gable between them. All windows are 2-light cross-framed casements with 3 over 12 panes on the ground floor and 3 over 9 above. A decayed relief plaque once read "This front rebuilt 1599", and is said to date from 1831 when the gables were rebuilt.

The courtyard elevation shows, to the right, the gable end of the garden front with a rebuilt 3-light mullion and transom window on the ground floor and an apparently unaltered 3-light window with four-centred heads, diamond lattices, and dripmould above. Above this is a sundial said to date from 1627. The stair tower has small-paned casement windows to the ground floor and attic landing, and two large windows on the half landings with leaded lattices. To the left stands the chief surviving chimney with four diamond-set stone flues, serving the hall fireplace among others. The remainder of the courtyard elevations have oak mullion and transom windows on the ground floor and painted sashes—all replacements. The doorway is modern. A hipped wing with timber roof ventilator to the left may once have been a granary and now has all reproduction windows.

The kitchen elevation features a large external stack topped by two Victorian red-brick diamond-set shafts. The walling is otherwise plain with reproduction casement windows. This section may include surviving walling from the early Tudor house. The left-hand end gable displays the Stuart-type windows mentioned elsewhere. Several other chimneys are present, some rebuilt in red brick. One is corbelled out on the first floor and attached to a small hipped roof room, though the fireplace is no longer in use and the chimney has been truncated at eaves level.

Interior

The most significant internal feature is the considerable survival of oak box-framed walls from the late medieval or early Tudor house. These are three panels high, forming the end walls of the hall and framing the old kitchen behind, and extending upwards into the first-floor rooms, indicating that the hall was always floored. Their original extent is clearly visible where plaster and panelling were removed from the main rooms, presumably in the early twentieth century. Photographs exist showing these rooms decorated with typical Victorian wallpapers and furnishings.

The hall has two timber-framed walls and two rough stone ones, all presumably wainscotted in the seventeenth century and possibly plastered in the eighteenth century before being wallpapered in the nineteenth. Its ribbed plaster ceiling with lozenges containing Tudor roses and fleur-de-lys appears out of place without more formal wall covering and may be seventeenth century, or possibly nineteenth-century reproduction. All decorative plaster ceilings in the house are of a similar character and are either seventeenth century or Victorian reproduction. The small ceiling with pendant inside the closet within the original front door is the only one that certainly appears to be early seventeenth century.

The present hall location suggests it has been moved to the right of the original one, as the screens passage was added into the low end when the main entrance was altered, and the side wall was moved forward to provide access to the wine cellar. The large Tudor fireplace has a later arch to the added seventeenth-century stairs to the left and an original external window to the right—a 3-light mullion-and-transom window which possibly indicates the character of the original entrance front windows. Beyond this is the doorway to the service wing, which was at the end of the screens passage and features a magnificent four-plank nail-studded door with strap hinges.

An oak doorway with a 4-centred head leads through to the Morning Room, which has a ribbed plaster ceiling and some repaired panelling with a marquetry cornice. The Drawing Room in the 1599 wing is wainscotted with a ribbed plaster ceiling, though the panelling has been altered and repaired; it contains an apparently early twentieth-century fireplace. The lobby at the end of the screens passage contains a framed staircase which may be original in position, though it has been altered.

The Dining Room is partly oak-framed and was the kitchen of the Tudor house. It contains a large open fireplace which must once have held a range, and a charcoal stove to its right. The ceiling features chamfered beams with bar-and-scroll stops. A screen leads through to the present kitchen, which must previously have been the wet kitchen. Most ground-floor rooms are stone-paved; the 1881 survey suggests these were replaced at that date.

The oak staircase rises in a compartment added around 1673 by Edward Arnold. It is an open-well stair with a closed string, twisted balusters, a moulded hand-rail, and turned knobs and pendants on the square newel posts. Stained-glass windows on the half landings depict Elizabeth I and Charles I with his family—both sovereigns are said to have visited the house. The treads are oak, the soffit is plastered, and the staircase rises clear to the attic.

The first floor contains two panelled rooms, one with linenfold and the other with square panels. The square-panelled room has a Tudor fireplace. Both rooms have ribbed plaster ceilings and good floorboards. There are also two rooms with compartmented ceilings featuring moulded oak ribs, known as the King's and Queen's Rooms. These ceilings are of older character and may date from the sixteenth century; one has cranked ribs so that the ceiling is bowed upwards.

The attic floor contains what appears to be a kind of Long Gallery, running the full length of the entrance front with a 3-light window at the north-west end and the dormer in the middle of the north-east front. The room is ceiled at collar level and has eight principal rafter trusses with ashlar pieces. Smaller rooms in the gables open off on the garden side.