23830

 

II  

Designated  

27/07/2000  

27/07/2000  

Auckland House  

 

Monmouthshire  

Llanelly  

 

Gilwern  

324250  

214661  

N  

Located on the w side of Gilwern Village at end of short driveway off Church Road, immediately w of canal.  

Domestic  

 

Built 1819 as an iron-warehouse for Joseph and Crawshay Bailey of Nantyglo, ironmasters. The erection of the warehouse at Llanelly Wharf (completed 1817) was given permission in 1819, and was sited at the end of the tramroad from the Nantyglo Ironworks, the tramroad completed in 1814. The new building was one of the world’s first railway warehouses. The Baileys however built a separate new tramroad from 1821 along the south side of the Clydach Gorge from Nantyglo to Govilon, and erected a warehouse at Govilon. The Gilwern warehouse was sold to the Brecknock and Abergavenny Canal Company in October 1821 for £80, with the agreement that the Baileys would give up possession in twelve months when the building was to be adapted house the Llanelly wharfinger. Extended probably soon after January 1820 when the ironmaster George Brewer of Coalbrookvale also required storage space; in 1820, the Beaufort Ironworks was also using the warehouse. Extended after 1822 to house the wharfinger and subsequent workers at the wharfage: this probably accounts for the added end hipped bays. The original use declined after 1828 when new railways from the Monmouthshire Canal to the south captured most of the local iron trade. Still a warehouse when marked on the 1847 Tithe Map. Converted to house mid-later C19, the date of the present arrangement of fenestration. Shown as Auckland House on 1878 25- inch map.  

Rubble built, broad hipped slate roof. Tall rubble chimneys stacks, one towards each end, and one to centre; stone tabling. Long two storey front elevation of six wide bays, C20 windows with cambered yellow brick heads; right bay has four-pane sashes. Four rubble-built dormer windows with four-pane casements; brick heads, plain bargeboards. Wide C20 gabled porch left of centre. Right end has two four-pane sashes to first floor and French doors to ground floor left. Two wide blocked cambered openings can be seen, one between the second bay from the left and the porch, the other between the second and third windows from the right, the latter with blocked basement-level openings each side. The wide openings originally accommodated railway sidings into the interior of the warehouse. According to the R.C.A.H.M.W. the earliest part (1819) comprises the second and third bays from the left, a straight joint visible to each side of this section, the present left stacks therefore on the original gable walls. The extensions of 1820 added two bays to the N, and finally, after 1822, a bay was added at each end, with hipped roofs.  

The interior was unavailable for inspection at the time of survey (December 1999).  

Listed as a rare and early industrial survival, being among the first railway warehouses in the world, built 1819-22. The impressively large building retains original scale and much evidence of its original use, even though converted to a house in the later C19. Unusual and early example of conversion of industrial building to domestic use.