2629

 

II*  

Designated  

04/03/1952  

31/01/2000  

Church Farmhouse and attached barn  

 

Monmouthshire  

Llanarth  

Usk  

Kemeys Commander  

334896  

204721  

 

Situated immediately S of churchyard at Kemeys Commander.  

Domestic  

 

Former parsonage of Kemeys Commander, mid to later C16. Two-room house with cruck truss, post-and-panel partition and later C17 paintings on partition. Barn attached in line. Despite the cruck truss never apparently an open hall, so dated to the later end of the cruck period. Marked on 1841 Tithe Map as owned and occupied by Eleanor Morgan, with 107 acres (43 hectares). Old photograph shows stone tiles along eaves, and one casement pair window since altered to French window.  

House, whitewashed rubble stone with slate roof (formerly stone tiled at eaves) to house and corrugated iron roof to barn in line. House to N of one and a half storeys, has small roughcast left end stack and brick stack on ridge. Two eaves dormers, one to left end, one to right of ridge stack. Ground floor has two windows to left of ridge stack with timber lintels, and one to right of stack and slightly right of eaves dormer, and one further right in left end of barn. All casement pairs except that to left which has been lengthened as French window. Whitewashed roughcast N end wall. Rear has 2 skylights, door to left of 2 windows, one C20 casement pair, the other a fixed 4-pane window. Barn has full-height double doors and single storey range coming forward to right with Bridgewater clay tiles to roof. Barn rear is rubble stone with double doors.  

Two-room plan extended into barn. Door with slot in jamb for draw-bar, massive posts to chamfered frame. Fine post and panel partition with chamfered posts and diagonal stops, end doors with Tudor arched heads, studded plank doors. Partition has long panels and 5 small square panels above, not in line, and the first 3 have faded paintings of figures in C17 dress, a man, a child and a woman, faint remnants of lettering also. Chimney at S end has been rebuilt further back with original chamfered lintel. Beams are chamfered with chamfered joists, stepped slightly curved stops. Room behind partition was subdivided in two. Lower end kitchen and stairs in former upper end of barn. Fine reused plank door from Allt-y-bela, the Tudor head found buried in the chimney rubble at Church Farm. Upstairs has one cruck truss the feet visible by the partition. Fox & Raglan found no evidence of framing between the collar and tie beams of the cruck, which is not chamfered.  

Listed as a well preserved C16 farmhouse, retaining fine interior detail, including a partition with remains of C17 painted decoration.