Min Yr Afon

Min Yr Afon

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 the side. The buildings feature steep pitched slate roofs with swept overhanging boarded eaves, sprocketed to the rear, and tall rendered corniced ridge stacks with decorative pots. Four gabled full dormers are set across the range. Overall, the frontage displays seven windows of 12-pane sashes (though two lower windows at the left lack glazing bars), with painted lintels and sills. The dormers contain 9-pane sashes.

Ynys Hafod occupies the four left bays and comprises a central doorway set on the right of the present house. This doorway features a Tudor arch flanked by gargoyle-type grotesques. Two of the windows contain coloured glass but are blind, fronting chimney stacks behind. The rear elevation presents an entirely different character: rendered and painted, it features a central Venetian window with separating pilasters and a small balcony, flanked by 12-pane sashes. The ground floor contains a central semi-circular porch with slender Corinthian columns and entablature with wreathed frieze, plus a recessed glazed door with overlight. What may originally have been an open verandah was enclosed around 1900 with long sashes featuring multi-pane upper lights and plain lower lights. To the left, a narrow hipped roof slightly projects over a staircase wing with similar sashes and a segmental arched ground floor doorway. A deep projecting cross wing to the left displays sprocketed eaves and cornice across its gable end. The first floor side elevation contains a two-window range of similar sashes. The gable end retains 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 consists mainly of single-width rooms, with a late 19th-century staircase rising from the rear hall. The rooms retain shutters, cornices, and 6-panelled doors with fluted surrounds. Ceiling hooks survive in what was formerly the kitchen or pantry. A passage created during remodelling on the upper floor provides separate access to bedrooms. Gothick-glazed display cupboards appear on each floor, with intersecting glazing bars upstairs and a polygonal form downstairs. Painted panelling in the cross wing may be 17th-century in origin.

Min Yr Afon comprises the three right bays. A large gap between the two inner bays reflects the unusual interior arrangement where the staircase rises against that wall as a result of interior reordering. At the end right is a doorway, now unused. The two right openings are set under partially blocked arches that relate to earlier openings. To the side is the present entrance: a small gabled hood over a round-arched doorway with a recessed boarded door and fanlight. The top floor has two 12-pane sashes set 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 and a 12-pane window below, both with very narrow glazing bars.

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

To the right is Henllys, comprising 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 topped by a multi-pane overlight.