23876

 

II  

Designated  

07/08/2000  

07/08/2000  

Pentre farmhouse  

 

Denbighshire  

Betws Gwerfil Goch  

Corwen  

Melin y wig  

303572  

348813  

 

½ km west of village of Melin y Wig.  

Agriculture and Subsistence  

 

A farmhouse probably of the C17, although the west unit carries a datestone inscribed R / DE / 1785. The latter unit may be a later addition, or the stone may date from an interior improvement; a construction joint in the exterior walls is not evident. There is an additional porch and bakehouse to the front (north). The latter was a public bakehouse for the neighbourhood (in the Tithe Survey the farm was in the same occupation as Melin Cynfal). The bay to the west has a staircase to its upper room only. This room is said to have been a lodging for farm servants. Pentre Homestead is recorded in the Tithe Survey (1840) as owned by Elizabeth Roberts and occupied by John Roberts, with a farm of 68 acres (27.5ha). Within living memory it had a horse-gin to the east of the kitchen, with a shaft entering the kitchen to work a butter churn.  

A lobby-entry house now of three units, ranging east/west and with its front and a small walled forecourt to the north. The kitchen is to the east. Two storey porch at the main entrance and a bakehouse added as a storeyed wing to the north side of the kitchen. Local axe dressed or rubble masonry throughout, with slate roofs and tile ridges. Three stone chimneys on the main range, one brickwork end chimney on the bakehouse. All the masonry apart from the chimneys is painted white. Stone walled rear garden. The front elevation is asymmetrical with the gables of the bakehouse and entrance porch at left, and two bays of the main range to the right. The bakehouse gable is blank but the porch gable has a door with overlight to right and two small windows. In the main range to the right two small-paned horizontally sliding sash windows remain at ground storey, one arched and the other with a large stone lintel. Above, two small renewed windows. At rear the lower windows have large stone lintels. Doors and windows generally replaced in earlier openings.  

Baffle entry plan type with back to back hearths to kitchen and central unit; stairs in kitchen unit.  

A probably C17 vernacular farmhouse, which notwithstanding some alteration to detail retains its traditional character.