22182

 

II  

Designated  

27/08/1999  

27/08/1999  

Church Hall, formerly the Church School  

 

Carmarthenshire  

Llanfihangel Aberbythych  

Carmarthen  

Golden Grove Village  

258992  

219776  

W  

To the west side of the village of Golden Grove, close to the church. Paved area shared with the church to front (south); hedged garden to rear. Stone wall to west.  

Education  

 

Designed for Lord Cawdor by Henry Ashton (a former assistant of Sir Jeffry Wyatville) in 1848. (Sir Jeffry died in 1840, and Ashton continued to practice from the same address in London. Ashton also worked for Lord Cawdor at Stackpole, and was Surveyor to the Westminster Improvement Commissioners.) The date of opening of the school is unknown, but the schoolmaster, Thomas Laugharne, is mentioned in the 1851 Census. The school was closed in 1982, and now serves as a parish hall.  

Former school building in the neo-Tudor style considered appropriate for superior educational buildings in the early Victorian period, a style which echoes that of Golden Grove mansion. Described here in terms of its original rooms, it consists of a two-storey master's house between a two-window boys' schoolroom to the left and a one-window schoolroom for girls to the right. The schoolrooms are single-storey; the girls' is lower-roofed and set back slightly from the line of the building. Rubble common masonry with limestone ashlar dressings including large quoins. The rear and the left gable wall have been rendered (not originally). Slate roofs in regular courses; tile ridge. The end gables, the gable of the master's house and the gables of the classrooms windows, both front and rear, are coped. Small finial over each schoolroom front gable. Diagonally set limestone chimney at right gable end with very pronounced coping and a large offset (other original chimneys lost). Small modern extensions at rear. At each side of the master's house is an open-fronted internal porch within a chamfered straight-sided simplified Tudor arch, with six-panelled internal doors. In the left porch an original door enters the boys' schoolroom, the door ahead is probably altered. In the right porch the right door enters the girls' schoolroom, the door ahead is altered and the door to the left is walled up. Three-light mullion windows above and below to the master's house at front; similar but taller windows carried up into through-eaves gables to the schoolrooms at front and rear. Quarry glazing. Above each of the schoolroom front windows is a scroll tablet with the inscription 'Fear God'.  

Exposed roof structure in the schoolrooms: each has a strutted mid-height purlin at each side. In the boys' schoolroom there are two trusses, the tiebeams of which have been cut through.  

A model school design by a former assistant of Sir Jeffry Wyatville, with good neo-Tudor detail and expressive planning, forming a consistent element within the estate village of Golden Grove.