Henllys

Henllys

An integrated L-shaped range comprising three separate dwellings on New Market Street. Built of stone rubble with mostly roughly dressed stone dressings, painted to side. The steep pitched slate roof features swept overhanging boarded eaves, sprocketed to rear, with tall rendered corniced ridge stacks decorated with pots and four gabled full dormers. The front elevation displays a 7-window range predominantly of 12-pane sashes, with no glazing bars to two lower windows at left, painted lintels and sills, and 9-pane sashes to the dormers.

Ynys Hafod comprises the four left bays and a centrally positioned doorway (now on the right of the present house) with a Tudor arch flanked by gargoyle-type grotesques. Windows with coloured glass are blind, fronting chimney stacks behind. The rear elevation is rendered and painted in a completely different style, featuring a central Venetian window with separating pilasters and a small balcony, flanked by 12-pane sashes. The ground floor displays a central semi-circular porch with slender Corinthian columns and entablature with wreathed frieze, containing a recessed glazed door with overlight. What may have been a more open verandah was enclosed around 1900 with long sashes with multi-pane upper and plain lower lights. To the left is a narrow hipped roof slightly projecting staircase wing with similar sash windows and a segmental arched ground floor doorway. A deep projecting cross wing to the left has sprocketed eaves and cornice across the gable end; the gable end contains what appears to be an original 17th-century cross-framed mullion and transom window with leaded quarry glazing. Two upper floor windows have small wrought-iron balconies.

The interior of Ynys Hafod comprises mainly single-width rooms with a late 19th-century staircase rising from the rear hall. Details include shutters, cornices, and 6-panelled doors with fluted surrounds. Ceiling hooks remain in the former kitchen/pantry area. A passage has been created upstairs to provide separate access to bedrooms. Gothick-glazed display cupboards feature on each floor—with intersecting glazing bars upstairs and polygonal form downstairs. The cross wing retains painted panelling which may be 17th-century in origin.

Min Yr Afon comprises the three right bays. A large gap between the two inner bays reflects the interior arrangement where the staircase unusually rises against that wall, resulting from a reordered interior. An unused doorway stands at the end right. The two right openings are set under partially blocked arches relating to earlier openings. The present entrance, to the side, is a small gabled hood over a round-arched doorway with recessed boarded door and fanlight. The top floor has two 12-pane sashes in reveals and the ground floor has three cambered-arched brick-headed windows, one of which is a small-pane casement. One bay of the main building's rear elevation projects, featuring a 16-pane first floor sash window above a 12-pane window below, both with very narrow glazing bars.

The interior of Min Yr Afon has a hall on the axis of the cross wing which joins the main building at a chamfered stone Tudor arch—clearly an original exterior entrance as evidenced by holes for bars behind. The inserted Georgian staircase rises behind, separating drawing and dining rooms which feature 6-panelled doors and shutters. First floor bedrooms have plain marble fireplaces and panelling. The attic in the roof apex shows thick purlins and trusses. A landing contains a small casement now opening onto the Ynys Hafod interior. A cellar is present.

Henllys comprises the end bay of the cross wing with a first floor casement window, a front single-storey wing with part-hipped roof and rounded end adjacent to the front door of Min Yr Afon, and a lower wing to the side with a doorway featuring a multi-pane overlight.