History

The earlier farmhouse at Tan-y-bwlch became the home farm for the Buckley estate at Dinas Mawddwy from the later 1860s. Edmund Peck (Buckley), illegitimate son of a wealthy Manchester business man, planned to develop the area with appropriate industries, building a fine Romantic Elizabethan house, Plas Dinas, and shortly after, workers cottages, a hotel, and his home farm, his architect being James Stephens of Manchester. The new planned square of farm buildings he undertook entirely in in-situ concrete construction, a new material which was being pioneered at about the same time by Lord Sudely at Gregynog, Powys. When the estate was sold in 1878, the farmbuildings were partly completed and comprised 'stalls for 13 oxen and for a like number of young cattle; calf kits, engine and boiler room, machine house and cutting room, loose box with granary and hay and straw lofts over'. The concrete used here is a no-fines concrete using slate quarry waste, presumably from Buckley's own quarry, as an aggregate, cast between shutters in lifts of some 60cm, and without provision for linear movement. The walls are of a consistent 230-250mm thickness throughout. There is no indication of rendering internally or externally, but they may once have been limewashed.

Exterior

The farmyard is about 40m square, with long ranges on the E, N and W sides, and an open cartshed partly closing the S side. The E range consists, from right to left, of a store and granary over, with a gabled loft door, a 3-bay barn, a 3-narrower bay workshop to shafting, and, at the N end, a 4 bay cowhouse, open internally at the corner to the cowhouse range along the N side. The barn has full-height doors to the central winnowing floor and ventilation slits each side. The workshop section has a stable door and two windows to the ground floor, and windows to the loft, and the cowhouse has two similar doors and square ventilation windows, one bay of which is now a workshop.

Interior

The barn has two shouldered king strut trusses with angled struts, carrying principals and two tiers of purlins. The concrete walls are left exposed both internally and externally.

Reasons for Listing

Included as a part of a well-planned mid-later C19 estate farmyard, and one of special interest where in-situ concrete has been used for the whole construction; a very early example of the successful and long lasting use of this technique.

External Links

• Cadwr Listing
• Wikidata Q29499793

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Peterborough (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Department for Communities Listed Historic Buildings of Northern Ireland: Information Guide for the 2nd Survey of Historic Buildings
• 
  The Listed Buildings and Other Principal Structures at the Royal Gunpowder Mills Waltham Abbey
• 
  Specifications for Building Conservation: Volume 1: External Structure: Practical Examples v. 2
• 
  Building Small Projects (New Best of Fine Woodworking)
• 
  Cumbria: Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)