19906

 

II  

Designated  

29/05/1998  

29/05/1998  

Gelli Gynan Hall  

 

Denbighshire  

Llanarmon-yn-Ial  

Ruthin  

Gelli Gynan  

318379  

354927  

 

Situated down long drive running W from lodge on B5431, some 1.3 km S of Llanarmon.  

Domestic  

 

Country house, the front range added in Elizabethan style in 1868 to a smaller original house apparently of the earlier C19. This has an attractive stone Gothick loggia or veranda of unusual quality that looks of c1820-30. Marked on 1844 Tithe Map as owned by Wilson Jones, occupied by Catherine Tatlock.  

Country house in two parts, the earlier low range to the rear and taller addition of 1868 to the front. Whitewashed roughcast with ashlar dressings and slate roofs. 1868 E addition is roughly square in plan, tall two and a half storeys with paired gables to front and sandstone ashlar copings, finials and tall modelled stacks, one on N side wall and one on SW rear gable. Jacobethan style with limestone ashlar stone mullion windows, two-window range to E front, in balanced asymmetry. Matching 2-light hoodmoulded attic windows, but first floor left has small single light, and right a large 3-light mullion-and-transom window, both with hoodmoulds. String course over ground floor, 2-step SE buttress, the string course carried around above first set-off. 3-light mullion-and-transom window to ground floor left, big square enclosed porch projecting to right. This has ashlar parapet with centre monogrammed plaque, perhaps C & I J. Ashlar flush quoins over diagonal short buttresses and front moulded pointed doorway with hoodmould. Plaque over with boar's head crest and motto in Welsh. Single rectangular lights in side walls. S side has big 2-storey canted bay with 1-4-1-light mullion and transom window each floor, stringcourses over, and top ashlar parapet pierced with pointed arcading. Eaves breaking 2-light mullion window above with hoodmould, under coped gable. SW corner has shorter 2-step buttress. Older house to W is L-plan, facing S and W, the windows renewed in C20. Two storeys, lower pitch to roofs with coped shouldered gables at right side and S end of S range and N end of W range. Short cemented stacks ribbed in imitation of diagonal shafts and with flat caps, one on each ridge. Windows on S front are stuccoed and hoodmoulded, possibly all altered in mid C20 when metal windows were inserted. Gable to right has tripartite windows, the lower one with door in place of centre light, and range to left has 2 windows upstairs and 3 downstairs, all 3 under a long hoodmould. W garden front retains more original detail. Dressings are in sandstone, but small-paned windows are C20 replacements. Gable to right has hoodmoulded window each floor, casement-pair above, longer cross-window below. Range to left has parapet ramped up to broad shallow canted full-height projecting bay with moulded ashlar cornice and parapet. Big hoodmoulded window each floor, tripartite, the lower one a French window. Ground floor of this range is set within a finely-detailed Gothick loggia, also canted-fronted, of 3 bays, the centre one of exceptional width for an ashlar entablature and cornice. Embattled parapet over. Four thin quatrefoil Gothick columns with shaft rings support the entablature, the outer pair attached to short ashlar return walls pierced with a pointed window. To left of left gable, additions, perhaps earlier to mid C20, in matching style with flush stone frames to windows. A narrow 2-storey, one-window section and then a single-storey range with coped parapet.  

 

Included as a small early C19 country house with stone Gothic loggia of high quality. The 1868 addition in Jacobethan style is unusual in the region, and has good quality stone detail.