Yr Hen Bersondy (also known as The Old Rectory) is a Grade II listed building in the Brecon Beacons National Park local planning authority area, Wales. First listed on 17 January 1963. House.

Yr Hen Bersondy (also known as The Old Rectory)

WRENN ID
stony-merlon-cedar
Grade
II
Local Planning Authority
Brecon Beacons National Park
Constituency
Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe MP: David Chadwick (LD)
Country
Wales
Date first listed
17 January 1963
Type
House
Address
Yr Hen Bersondy (also known as The Old Rectory), Scethrog, Talybont-On-Usk, Powys
OS grid reference
SO 107 251
Coordinates
51.91797, -3.29905
Source
Cadw listing

Also on this page: flood risk · radon risk · weather exposure · detailed attributes ↓

Description

Yr Hen Bersondy, also known as The Old Rectory, is a medium-sized village house with an L-shaped plan. The main house features a central entrance with a staircase parallel to the front and a long wing to the east that includes living accommodation and part of a barn. The main house has battered walls made of stone rubble faced with roughcast, topped with a Welsh slate roof and rendered long and narrow end stacks, along with a tall stone lateral stack on the side wing.

The entrance front has a range of three 6/6 pane sash windows with narrow glazing bars, and two similar windows on the ground floor that are not symmetrically spaced due to the staircase layout. There is a central single-storey flat-roofed porch with Gothick windows on either side of the central doorway, which features fluted pilasters, rosettes, and a margin-glazed door.

On the garden elevation, the main house has hipped roof dormers with 9/9 pane casements, tripartite sashes on the sides (with the right side altered), and a 6/6 pane sash window in the center, all horned on the first floor. The ground floor has large full-length 6/6 pane horned sash windows with narrow glazing bars on the left and right, a smaller 6/6 pane sash to the center left, and a central margin-glazed door, all under a verandah with replaced glazing supported by cast iron columns on stone plinths. The wall is battered, and the gable end has hoods over the side windows.

To the right, the two-bay hipped roof wing projects forward with a different roof pitch, featuring altered tripartite windows on the first floor and a single 3/3 pane sash window on the ground floor. The side elevation includes two hipped roof half dormers, a gabled porch, extended doors, and ventilation slits to the former barn, along with a triangular ventilator on the gable end. The front boundary wall is made of stone with flat coping.

While there is no access to the interior of the house, it is reported to retain many early 19th-century details, including six-panelled doors with moulded surrounds, panelled reveals, and shutters. There are also some cross beams and joists in the early part of the L-shaped range, which is said to contain a well. The barn interior features pegged collar and tie trusses and three rows of trenched purlins.

Local climate

Yr Hen Bersondy (also known as The Old Rectory) sits in one of the wettest parts of the UK, with an average of 1,180 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 90% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 78% of listed buildings.

It experiences an average of 57 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 96% of listed buildings. Of these, 32 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.

Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.

More on this building

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Nearby listed buildings

  1. Scethrog House Grade II* 85 m
  2. Barn to N of The Tower Grade II 300 m
  3. The Tower Grade I 376 m
  4. Pennorth railway bridge Grade II 952 m
  5. Penawr Bridge (Canal Bridge No.151) Grade II 1.0 km
  6. Newton Farmhouse Grade II 1.0 km
  7. Barn and stable range at Newton Grade II 1.1 km
  8. Brynllici including barn atttached to left Grade II* 1.2 km
  9. Castle Bridge (Canal Bridge No. 152) Grade II 1.2 km
  10. Former house at Brynllici Grade II 1.2 km