Church Farmhouse (aka Glebe Farm)

Church Farmhouse, also known as Glebe Farm, is a Grade II* listed building constructed of local rubblestone, wholly rendered and painted, with Welsh slate roofs and red brick stacks. It is a two-storey house with a garret, the rear wing being two storeys only. Both the main house and rear wing are single-depth structures arranged in an L-shape. The house is entered on the inner angle of the L on the north side, which shelters the entrance from the wind.

The main south elevation is partly sunk into the ground and displays two windows on the ground floor and one on the first floor, all small 20th-century casements set in what appear to be original but altered openings. The roof is steeply pitched with rebuilt gable stacks. The left gable is blind, while the right gable features a large external stone stack with offsets. This stack has a small casement window on either side at first-floor level and a tiny window on the left for the garret.

The rear elevation of the main block is partially obscured on the left side by the rear wing. What is visible shows the upper part of the projecting mural stair and blind walling above an added lean-to porch, which shelters a chamfered stone Tudor arch doorway. The rear wing has two bays on the entrance side: the first bay has a 3 + 3 pane wooden casement on each floor, followed by a smaller casement and a plain doorway with blind wall above. The rear wall of the wing has two casements above and one to the right below, all 3 + 3 panes. A straight joint in the walling indicates that the right-hand bay is an extension, though this is not visible on the front wall. The wing has red ridge tiles and a brick stack marking the end of the original build phase.

The main ground floor room appears to have been of uncertain original use. It would have been unheated, with a Victorian fireplace and a chimney that appears to have been added to the gable wall externally. The room was probably a store room, possibly for parish business, with the lower hall for servants located in the rear wing. Two chamfered 2-centre arch doorways lead from this room: one in the north-east corner to the rear service wing, and a taller, higher-status doorway retaining its iron pintles, which leads to the mural stair and the rector's private chambers above. The ground floor originally had a lower ceiling, as is clearly evident from the upper floor. The mural stair has the corbelled roof typical of this type and arrives at another tall 2-centred doorway, with two additional steps up to the raised floor level of the 19th-century alteration.

The first-floor room functioned as an upper hall and was always ceiled. On the west wall the hood of a grand fireplace survives, with a large oak lintel supported on two massive stone corbel brackets. Another 2-centred arch doorway leads to the rear wing, presumably connecting to the priest's bedchamber or oratory. Evidence suggests another stair once rose to the garret, which was certainly lit, but this became redundant when the ceiling was raised to accommodate the raised floor level, leaving the roof space merely an attic.

The roof comprises a 2-bay structure with a single principal rafter truss, plainly finished, indicating it was never intended as a showpiece element of the upper hall as found at The Old Rectory, Llangan. Two tiers of trenched purlins and a ridgepiece have secondary rafters morticed into them. Although some timbers were replaced during reslating, all are oak and many appear ancient. One bay of the roof space has been separated off as a room at some point, with whitewashed timbers and remains of closure boarding on the main truss, predating the reslating as the slates are neither torched nor painted.

The rear wing contains a current farm living room on the ground floor with no visible ancient features, though a large fireplace is said to survive behind the modern one. The original kitchen was a detached building (see Outbuilding). The current kitchen is housed in a 19th-century extension. The roof of the rear wing was not available for inspection.