The Artha

The Artha is a two-storey farmhouse built of rubble with parts rebuilt in brick, all painted white, with hipped roofs of blue slate. It has an L-plan formed by a hall-range on an east-west axis facing south, with a parlour wing at the west end projecting south and facing west.

The main entry to the hall is through a small modern glazed porch in the angle with the wing, and features a fine later 17th-century square-headed doorway with wave and ovolo moulding and globular stops. Close to the right-hand side of the porch is a two-light casement window with renewed glazing and slender wooden mullions, as have all the other windows. The upper floor has two widely-spaced three-light windows. Attached to the right-hand (east) corner is a pair of classical-style rusticated gatepiers with moulded cornices, painted white. Each is surmounted by an unpainted cushion-like pad on which sits a very prominent corniced entablature with a low pedestal in the centre, probably intended for a ball finial.

At the rear, a flight of steps mounts up the east bay to a granary. In the centre is a very wide extruded chimney stack with two wide offsets on its west side. To the right of that is a back door protected by a pentice with a window above, and at the west end (the rear of the parlour wing) is a large projected hearth-stack with a tall rectangular shaft.

The west side of the parlour wing has been rebuilt in brick except for the north bay, but as the whole wall is painted white and the roof is hipped at both ends, it presents a three-bay architectural west front of dollshouse symmetry. There is a central doorway up three steps with nosings, two three-light casements at ground floor (the left slightly larger and segmental-headed), and similar casements of three, two and three lights above. The south bay also has a small cellar window. The enormous chimney at the north end is almost balanced by a large end-wall chimney at the south end.

The east side (the re-entrant to the hall-range) has a one-light window above the glazed porch, one three-light window on each floor to the left, and a small gabled dormer in the slope of the roof above these.

The hall in the main range contains a very large but crudely-shaped rear-wall fireplace (now blocked) with an enormous hump-backed monolithic lintel. Beyond the west end of the hall is a passage with a stud-and-panel partition to the former kitchen in the north bay of the wing, which has at its north end a very large segmental-arched stone fireplace with chamfered surround containing two bread ovens. Between the kitchen and the parlour is a dog-legged closed-string staircase rising to the full height. It has newels with ball pendants and finials, shaped splat balusters, and a moulded handrail with raised grip. The bottom newel has strap-work carving and the date 1678; the risers of the return flights also have elaborate carved decoration.

At the south end of the parlour is a fine stone fireplace with a moulded architrave and a large and unusual floating classical entablature above. The frieze has raised lettering reading "I / ANNO DOM / 1676 / W", and the cornice has dentils and egg-and-dart enrichment. On the upper floor, the chamber above the kitchen has a small fireplace with a corniced architrave including "1679" on the frieze.

The chamber above the parlour has unusually fine original features, including panelled closet doors in all four corners with small pediments; a stone fireplace with a moulded architrave including bead-and-reel; a moulded plaster frieze; and an extremely elegant moulded plaster ceiling (recently restored) with a central rose, long slender curvilinear ribs with enriched terminals, and winged cherubs at the corners. This ceiling is comparable in style and quality to the ceiling in one of the rooms at Llwyn-y-gaer House.