Llanderfel Farmhouse

Llanderfel Farmhouse

A farmhouse built of whitewashed rubble stone with slate roofs (formerly stone-tiled to the upper section). The left end has a square external stone stack, raised in brick, with a 20th-century small red brick ridge stack between two units. The building is one storey with attic accommodation.

The front elevation is largely obscured by a 20th-century lean-to dairy addition. A gabled lofted outbuilding to the left masks the left corner of the house. A byre is attached to the left end, its front wall set back and roof lower than the main building. The house has one late 20th-century catslide dormer to the roof left and two small skylights to the right. A gabled projection to the left carries an asbestos-roofed lean-to on its end wall.

The upper right end wall has a raised pier left of centre, presumably a chimneybreast truncated below the gable, and a 20th-century large casement-pair window to the attic left. The lower left end has the byre to the left, a 20th-century window to the attic, and a blocked entry to the ground floor with a window, both to the right of the byre.

The garden front shows a clear division between two units. The upper unit has slightly higher eaves with two altered 20th-century openings: a door with sidelight to the left with a brick head possibly from the 19th century, and a window to the centre with a flat brick head and concrete sill. Two skylights light this section. The lower unit to the right has two large 20th-century catslide dormers on the eaves with stone sills, a square 12-pane sash with cambered brick head to the ground floor left (in a former door), and a similar longer window to the centre. A stair light under the eaves to the extreme right sits actually under the eaves of the lower byre roof. There are no obvious stonework joints visible between the units or to the byre.

The byre is windowless on the garden side. On the entrance side it has a door to the right with cambered double brick head, a wide centre opening with timber lintel under a similar loft opening, and a door to the left with cambered brick head.

Within the added lean-to are two doors; the left one serves as the present entry into the upper end of the lower of the two units, positioned against the side of the massive chimney between the units. A winding stone stair backs onto this chimney, with entry to the left of the chimneybreast side. The upper room is entered by a doorway at the upper end of a passageway running along the front wall of the lower unit. A heavy chamfered and stopped frame sits in a recess with thick stone slabs above. The fireplace has been altered with a 19th-century bread oven and the beam was cut to accommodate it. Heavy chamfered beams are present: one over the fireplace, a second in the middle with run-out stops, and a third plastered over, narrower and chamfered with stops. The upper bay has a plain beam and plain joists. Stairs on the fireplace side provide access to the upper end loft, which contains two collar trusses and one massive purlin; others have been replaced. There was formerly a door on the side of the deep chimneybreast.

The lower end has a stone-flagged passage along the front wall with various blocked openings to the right of the entrance door: a square recess, a straight joint, a recess with splayed sides to a narrow blocked loop, and a long recess low down measuring some 2 metres long by 0.75 metres high from the floor. A window in the lower pine end is said to have originally been a door. The lower room has seven chamfered joists and an end fireplace in a very deep chimney breast of some 2.5 metres depth. The stair to the right has been rebuilt. The roof has a large oak truss on stub beams with cut ends of the tie-beam, a wall post extending down to floor level, and inserted posts under the cut ends, with a new collar.

Attached outbuildings contain some heavy loft beams. The byre upper end has the massive external chimneybreast of the house, rebated to the right, with a 19th-century loft roof.