History

Built c.1820 by James Richards, steward to the duke of Beaufort (of Troy House, Mitchel Troy, q.v.), on the site of a farmhouse known as Ffos-y-bwla. Successive members of this family served in that capacity and built up an estate by piecemeal purchases in this area during the late C18 and early C19. Altered probably in the 1920s.

Exterior

A 2-storeyed house of elegant Georgian proportions. It has white-painted roughcast walls (probably of rubble construction) and hipped slate roofs swept out over prominently oversailing eaves. The plan is L-shaped, formed by an architectural front range on an E-W axis facing S (to the garden) with a long wing to the rear (E) of its W half, the E side of this including the present main entrance. The 3-window S front is symmetrical, with end-wall chimneys, and unusually long, the openings widely-spaced. In the centre is a round-headed doorway, protected by a segmental canopy carried on consoles (and supported at the outer corners by slender cast-iron posts), with reeded jambs, a recessed part-glazed door and a fanlight with radiating glazing bars. Above the doorway is a 16-pane hornless sash window, and about midway between these openings and each outer corner is a relatively narrow 2-storey semicircular bay with curved tripartite multi-pane hornless sash windows. The E return wall has two 12-pane sashes on each floor, the upper much smaller. The E side of the rear wing (i.e. the present entrance front) has 3 large segmental-headed windows on each floor, vertically-aligned but irregularly spaced, the middle ones being offset left. The third at ground floor (now covered by a large glass lean-to) is sashed, but all the others have unusual 3-light joinery with high-set transoms and leaded small-pane glazing: the mullions and transoms flat-faced, the glazing almost flush, and the centre light of each containing a cast-iron casement with external hinges. The present main doorway, which is placed between the 1st and 2nd windows, and appears to be an early C20 insertion, has a slimmed-down classical architrave of ashlar, with a flat canopy on shaped consoles and a reproduction studded door.

Interior

The main range has stone-flagged floors and an open-string staircase with 2 stick balusters per tread and a wreathed curtail. A large room in the rear wing, which was probably originally the kitchen, now has parquet-block flooring and wall-panelling of early C20 historicist character (like the architrave of the doorway which opens into it).

Reasons for Listing

Included as a distinctive example of early C19 domestic architecture, and for its associations with the Beaufort estate.

External Links

• Cadwr Listing
• Wikidata Q29502694

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

• 
  London 4: North: North v. 4 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Old House Care and Repair
• 
  Listed Buildings and Other Heritage Assets
• 
  Suffolk: West: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Sussex: East with Brighton and Hove (Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Oxfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)