Llanyrafon

Llanyrafon is a gentry house of rendered rubble stone with slate roofs and large stone chimneys. The building dates from the medieval and early modern periods and has a complex plan consisting of a roughly T-shaped three-storey main house with a southern porch crosswing, answered by a rear northern wing, and lower two-storey ranges on each side. The eastern range has a lean-to kitchen to the rear and a parallel outbuilding behind (a former bakehouse). All windows were boarded at the time of inspection, and most lintels have been cemented, with what were probably timber lintels replaced in concrete.

The main house displays a small stone chimney stack on the right end, actually serving the lower eastern range. The porch crosswing to the right features overhanging eaves with a coped gable (rebuilt 1951) and a stone ball finial. Above the porch, at apex level, is a small square blank window or panel positioned over a horizontal attic window (a casement pair from 1951) with no sill. The first floor shows an eroded sandstone three-light mullion window with recessed chamfered square-headed lights, and the ground floor has a plain square-headed door.

The return to the right of the porch shows a similar stone-mullion three-light window on the first floor, a blocked opening below, and brickwork in the wall indicating the line of an inserted flue. The return to the left has another similar first-floor stone mullion window of two lights with a dripstone moulding. The wall to the left angles back to expose a main-range window, indicating that the porch is an addition. A ground-floor square window here has no sill.

The main range to the left displays large brick-framed cambered-headed windows on each floor to the left, and a window in a former door with a cemented lintel in the angle to the porch. Above this, a small three-light stone mullion window has two lights blocked and the third revealed by a splay in the porch side wall, with a cemented lintel. The large windows to the right and the door originally had twelve-pane sash windows.

The left (western) lower range is two storeys tall with a stone western end stack. It has one window on each floor to the extreme right (survey drawings show the upper window was originally blank and set further left), and two square windows to the first floor on the left side above a nineteenth-century boarded door and window. The door was originally in an added brick porch; survey drawings show a casement pair window to the right of the door, now blocked. Windows and doors have cemented lintels and no sills. An added brick stack once stood on the front wall face.

The right (eastern) range is two storeys with a two-window range of wooden casements on each floor, cemented lintels and no sills to the ground floor. Notably, it features an unusual small five-sided stone chimney on the eastern gable end.

The rear of the main range displays a massive lateral chimney in the angle to the rear left wing, with corbelling at eaves level on the right side, resting on two corbels over slightly less projecting masonry corbelled on two corbels from first-floor sill level. The chimneybreast steps in on the left in three large steps to a large rectangular stone shaft capped in brick. To the right is a one-window range of large windows with cemented lintels and brick sides. To the left, the big rear wing has one window on each floor in the western side wall; the upper one is horizontal with a cemented lintel set to the right, and the lower one is square in a former door. The northern gable end of this wing has overhanging eaves, a hoodmoulded attic window to the right of centre, a first-floor window also slightly right of centre with a cemented lintel, and two windows to the ground floor—a small one to the left and a larger one to the right with a cemented lintel and brickwork above. A big external chimneybreast on the eastern side wall carries a tall, sheer stack. The main range eastern gable end has a loft window with a cemented lintel.

The eastern wing itself has an external chimneybreast on its eastern gable end with two flat set-offs and the five-sided chimney. A tiny loft light sits to the left, with a small two-light oak mullion window featuring a diamond mullion on the first floor to the right and a blocked door to the ground floor right. A lean-to to the rear is largely obscured by a parallel gabled outbuilding, which is a former bakehouse with a broad roof oversailing the rear wall, featuring the curve of a bread oven.

The western wing has its northern rear wall continuous with the main house. It has a large window to the first floor on the left, a small stair light to the right of centre, and a ground-floor door and window with brick sides and cemented lintels (the window has brickwork below). A lean-to outbuilding on the end wall has a door to the rear and a door and window to the southern front with cemented lintels. A big external chimneybreast on the end wall is set slightly right of the apex, with one step to the left side and a nogged brick cap. A loft window with a cemented lintel crowns this wall.

The interior was inaccessible at the time of recording but is documented from an RCAHM survey. The porch is plastered within. A large oak inner doorway with chamfered jambs and a slightly arched head leads to a heavy oak door. The entrance hall contains one high chamfered beam, with twentieth-century stairs inserted where earlier rear stairs were removed. A twentieth-century partition to the left gives access to a room with three more high chamfered beams. A fine stone fireplace on the back wall features double wave mouldings to the jambs and a flat bressumer; the opening continues above, with a relieving beam in the wall.

The earlier eastern wing has a two-room plan divided by a partition. The western room has flagstone floors and deep-chamfered beams with bar stops, the western beam chamfered on the eastern side only. The western end contains a deep fireplace in coursed stone (added later) with a segmental arched head and voussoirs on an iron bar. Behind the frame of the western entrance door is a slot that may once have held a cruck beam. The northern wall shows a blocked doorway with a modern door adjoining. A fine sixteenth to seventeenth-century post-and-panel partition between rooms features two original Tudor-arched doorways, the southern one enlarged for barrels, with chamfered and stopped posts. The eastern room was a hall and store but possibly originally a heated parlour, with a centre beam and a beam over the fireplace.

The rear northern wing of the main house appears to have been originally accessible only from outside. Its ground floor contains a nineteenth-century fireplace and possibly an eighteenth-century round-headed china cupboard; the rear face of a truncated cruck is visible behind this. The kitchen behind the eastern wing has a brick partition wall in front of a large kitchen and oven complex spanned by a massive beam with wave-moulded stops. Winding stone stairs lead to a missing attic floor.

The western range has three beams and a fourth over the western fireplace. Small inserted stairs divide the ground floor into three sections by partitions.

The first floors echo the ground-floor arrangements. The main range has high beamed ceilings; the left room features a fine rear-wall Tudor-arched moulded fireplace with elaborate vase stops decorated with fleurs-de-lys. On the face of the fireplace head are a series of open lozenges around a central motif, the lozenges enclosing eroded relief letters reading possibly "WGM 160?" (perhaps 1602, 1608, or 1609). The room over the porch has a blocked fireplace in the northern wall with a chamfered bressumer featuring a concave stop, and a blocked window in the chamber over the entrance lobby. The northern wing room has no especial features. In the western chamber of the eastern wing is a small version of the inserted fireplace found below. The feet of tie-beam trusses are visible, with the tie-beams cut.

The western range wall to the main range appears to be inserted, suggesting the ranges were originally continuous. Two ceiling beams span this space.

The roof of the main house has three collar-trusses with chamfered collars tenoned into the blades; the eastern truss was altered for the rear northern wing. The eastern wing has two trusses, originally with tie-beams, now cut. The western range has three trusses.