84994

 

II  

Designated  

13/08/1986  

05/03/1999  

'New Mansion' at Ruperra Home Farm  

 

Caerphilly  

Rudry  

 

Ruperra  

323050  

186383  

 

On open hillside E of Ruperra Home Farm, and reached by a farm road on W side of minor road between Michaelston-y-Fedw and Draethen.  

Domestic  

 

A small late-medieval storeyed house consisting of a first-floor hall and solar, with kitchen and service rooms below. The house was gutted in the C18 to make an agricultural building. The S side faced a yard and had a cattle shed added at its W end, which is now demolished.  

Two-storey former house of battered rubble-stone walls and corrugated asbestos-cement roof. The front, facing a former yard, is on the S side and has a wall attached to its L side. A central inserted cow-house doorway is under a timber lintel. To the L is the shadow of a former gabled cattle shed, in which is an inserted doorway with timber surround and lintel. To the R of the central doorway is an added vent strip under a timber lintel, and a doorway under an added concrete lintel further R. In the R gable end is an external stack cut down below apex and partly corbelled at 1st-floor level. A small blocked window in a (possibly re-used) dressed stone surround and lintel is upper L. The L gable end has a 1st-floor stack (possibly originally on corbels) cut down below apex, to L of which is a 2-light solar window with cusped heads. In the lower storey are blocked windows to former service rooms L and R. The rear wall has a central cow-house doorway aligned with the front, partly blocked with rubble stone and with an inserted boarded door. To the L of the doorway is a blocked kitchen window with relieving arch. Offset to the L above the central doorway is a boarded loft door under a timber lintel and with brick jambs. A blocked solar window is at upper R.  

The plain 4-bay tie-beam roof is C18, after it ceased to be a dwelling. In the R gable end is a segmental-headed kitchen fireplace in the lower storey with an added brick bread oven. In the upper storey is the hall fireplace offset to the L under a timber lintel. Part of a loft survives on cross beams. A ledge in the wall shows that the solar was at a slightly higher level to the L end. In the service rooms below the solar the blocked windows have deep splays.  

An important example of a late medieval house retaining early detail despite its conversion for farm use.