4732

 

II  

Designated  

17/06/1966  

26/07/2000  

The Clock House  

 

Gwynedd  

Llanegryn  

 

Llanegryn  

261200  

305439  

 

The building is within the grounds of Peniarth, approximately 20m M of the house, facing out over the lawns to the SE.  

Commercial  

 

The building was erected during the lifetime of Richard or Lewis Owen, probably significantly earlier than the date 1727 indicated in the inscription, but its original purpose and its relationship to the main house is unclear. It may have been the unfinished predecessor to the main house before the latter was modernised with the urbane brick facade in the Palladian manner applied to the earlier stone house, and thereafter used as guest lodgings, as is suggested by the inscription. It is most unlikely that it was a folly as has been suggested.  

Built of red brick of estate manufacture, with stone quoins, and stone rear walls. Slate roofs, concealed from the front by a parapet. Two storeys. The central pavilion, designed in the English Restoration style of the late C17, stands slightly forward, with end raised rustic quoins, and is of 3 window bays, surmounted by a pediment with stone cornices, containing a clock face and scrollwork inscribed TYLWYTH EIGNION. The central doorcase with a moulded architrave, pulvinating frieze and cornice, is now converted to a 18-pane window, the stepped keystone carved with a scallop shell. To either side, C20 timber windows in the original openings, each with a keystone, and on the first floor, 3 segmental headed paned windows with eared architraves and keystones. Above the door a shaped marble tablet, possible brought in from elsewhere, reading 'Non bene vivit Homo/Nisi potat ad ostia tando/LVDOVICVS OWEN Arm./Extruxit hoc/MDCCXXVII'. (Lewis Owen died in 1729). On the left, a 4-bay wing is set back, terminating with raised stone quoins. Four-paned horned sash windows to each floor, the upper windows having brick aprons, above which is a stone plat band at the base of the brick panelled parapet. A balancing right hand wing is required but is absent. On the roof, a timber octagonal cupola added in 1812 to mark William Wynne's becoming High Sheriff of the county in 1812, with a bell-shaped lead roof terminating in a wind vane dated 1812. It contains the bell for the clock. At the rear, a tall chimney behind the main facade, carrying a gabled timber clockface presenting to the service yard. A long lean-to structure, part stone part brick, has been added along the rear, with a slate roof with small rooflights. The left wing returns at the W with a long, lower, 2-storey range also of brick with stone quoins, and having timber windows and two boarded doors, one at the far end with a blocked opposing door at the rear. Twelve-paned sash window in the gable end. The rear elevation of the wing is of 5 window bays, three on the ground floor.  

 

Included as a building exhibiting a courtly design in brick, fashionable in the late C17-early C18, of group value with the main house and other buildings at Peniarth.