Penrhos Farmhouse

Penrhos Farmhouse is a large Renaissance farmhouse dating from the 16th century, with alterations and additions in later periods. The walls are roughcast, with a hipped pantile roof. Tall brick end-stacks have stone bases with offsets and 20th-century brick flues with simply moulded caps. The symmetrical south front is two storeys high, with the upper wall coved below the eaves. The first floor has four 2+2 pane casement windows, with flat window heads and painted brick sills. A central wall carries a Beaufort crest with a coronet, displaying the Somerset, Herbert, and Woodville coats of arms, encircled with the Garter. A continuous string course runs along the first-floor level. The ground floor has a central entrance doorway with a gabled hood, slender scrolled consoles, and a 19th-century six-panel door (the upper three panels are sunk, the lower three flush). Ground floor window openings are segmental arched with painted brick sills. All windows were renewed around the year 2000 with timber casements. The rear elevation features a central full-height stair wing with a hipped slate roof, flanked by cat-slide continuations of the main roofline (with roof-lights added around 2000), and enclosed at ground floor level by a large 20th-century lean-to.

The original plan has been partially opened out, but the basic layout remains consisting of a central entrance hall flanked by two principal rooms on the ground floor, with two subsidiary rooms at the rear, to either side of the stair wing. The right-hand room contains elements of an earlier structure, including a large fireplace with sandstone jambs and a heavy chamfered timber bressumer, three cross-beams (one against the end wall), broad chamfered joists, each stopped at only one end, a splayed opening to the rear room, and a second doorway with a pegged oak frame. The entrance hall has been opened out into the left-hand room, although the partition framing is retained, with four cross-beams – two of which appear to be early and are chamfered, while the other two are rougher replacements. The staircase, probably from the early 19th century, opens off the rear of the hall, with an open string, circular newel, swept handrail, and slim spindles. The left-hand room has a fireplace with a chamfered stone lintel and four cross-beams, two of which seem earlier and are chamfered. Shutters to the ground floor windows are likely from the early 19th century. Plasterwork, originally thought to be contemporary (moulded ceiling cornices with acanthus decoration), has been removed.

The first floor is planned with four rooms opening off a rear corridor; the end rooms have large walk-in cupboards to either side of the fireplaces. The attic is of six bays with collar trusses and three tiers of trenched purlins (all the timber limewashed), and is divided by a partition, likely from the 17th century, bearing a boarded door with strap hinges, inscribed in rough italic script 'Chees Room'. The roof over the stair tower has a curved collar truss.

There is a cellar under the right-hand section of the house, accessed via a doorway in the 20th-century extension that encloses the stair tower. The doorway to the cellar is planked and nailed and has strap hinges.