Late 16th century 3 room rubble whitened cross passage plan & attic. Stud panel partitions. Diamond mullioned windows. Roof 1/2 stone 1/2 corrugated iron.

[Additional:]

Dan-y-bwlch is one of the most significant vernacular houses to have become accessible in recent years. It was partly surveyed by Cyril Fox (1951) and included in Monmouthshire Houses, Part II: Sub-medieval Houses, c. 1550?1610 (Cardiff, 1953), pp. 27-8, fig. 6, pl.IIc. It was listed grade II in 1998 as a substantially surviving late C16th farmhouse. The house was last occupied in the 1950s and was subsequently used as an agricultural building. A `tin? roof (partly replacing the stone-tiled roof on the house) has kept the house dry, and listed building consent has been granted recently (2015) for the conversion of the house.

Now that the house has become fully accessible, it is clear that Dan-y-bwlch is one of the most convincing houses of longhouse type, a house-type of unusual interest and complexity in which a household and its cattle are housed under the same roof. Frequently longhouses are fragmentary with rebuilt downhouses. At Dan-y-bwlch It is clear that the range has one building period ? there are no straight joints between upper house and lower cowhouse. The distinctive stop-chamfered timber detail (hollow chamfer and angled stop) provides a unifying element throughout the house. Dan-y-bwlch is a `classic? longhouse and has special interest because (1) house and cowhouse are contemporary; (2) the original entry has been preserved; (3) the downhouse preserves the evidence for tethering in the cowhouse (there are only three or four other known examples in Wales). Dan-y-bwlch has additional interest because the house is transitional between open hall and fully storeyed house. When first built Dan-y-bwlch had both an open hall and a fireplace and a cowhouse.

Dan-y-bwlch has several difficult and related points of interpretation. Houses of longhouse type with a platformed siting often have a late-medieval origin as cruck-framed hall-houses. There are no surviving crucks at Dan-y-bwlch but it is important to ask: (1) is the chimney an insertion?; (2) has the hall ceiling been inserted?; (3) has the fireplace stair been altered?
The conclusions reached after investigation are that:
(1) The fireplace is not inserted. The stop-chamfers are the same as the other first-ohase features.
(2) The hall ceiling is secondary and was inserted after the fireplace.
(3) The hall was originally open to the roof but dignified by a dais canopy, i.e. by an internal jetty that formed a canopy of honour over the dais bench and table.
(4) The fireplace stair is an original feature and the stair curves round to first-floor level. It must have been adjusted when the hall ceiling was inserted but there is no clear evidence for this. The first-floor doorway lacks the heavy doorframe/lintel of the first-phase doorways.
Dan-y-bwlch originally had a hall open to the roof but was heated by a substantial fireplace. The original arrangement is transitional between open hall and storeyed house: a mid-sixteenth-century or slightly later building date (1550?70) is likely for this transitional house.

R.F. Suggett/RCAHMW/March 2015