Cylchgronau Cymru

Chwiliwch trwy dros 450 o deitlau a 1.2 miliwn o dudalennau

with a lobby entrance, and, secondly, that the final stage was reached by a process of addition which we did not work out fully. At LLYNGEREN and WRLOD-DDU (both in Y FAENOR) the final plan in each case has three rooms of which two are heated, but with only one fireplace in the main stack which creates the lobby. In clarifying the houses the relation between the hall and the room beyond it is important. Thus at Llyngeren (Fig. 7) the division of the far room into two, an unheated parlour and a china pantry which looks as if it began as a true pantry, is much the same as in the very large class of long-house deriv- atives and is rare, if it ever occurs, in true lobby-entrance houses. It is a different story at Wrlod-ddu (Fig. 7), where the far room is a narrow dairy or pantry, because this corresponds exactly to a hall/service-room relationship common in the south-east. Nevertheless, in both houses it is the lack of a second fireplace in the main stack which, more than anything else, suggests that these houses are on approximations to the orthodox lobby-entrance plan rather than a deliberate attempt to copy it. And, of course, there is one other feature of its plan marking off Wrlod- ddu from any true lobby-entrance house, namely, the attached byre, something which is quite unknown in the south-east. Unfortunately, Wrlod-ddu is totally lacking in dateable detail, although its plan probably took shape sometime during the eighteenth century. CEFN D'RYSGOED, YSTRADFELLTE (Fig. 9), hardly qualifies to be called a centralised plan, but as an attempt to break away from the limitations of the long-house inheritance it deserves discussion here. As first built it had one storey and attics, the old roof-line being visible at both ends. This, taken with the one or two small windows with wooden lintels which survive and the chamfer stop of the kitchen fireplace, suggest the early eighteenth century. When the house was heightened to two storeys in the early nineteenth century a porch was added to give indepen- dent access to the room over the parlour, like the staircase-porches of a much earlier period.42 IV. GENTRY HOUSES THE Faenor and Penderyn district is very lacking in houses which have a specifically gentry type of plan. The best house of this kind which we discovered was CEFN-Y-DON in Penderyn (PI. VIIB). Externally it is unrevealing. Its appearance at the front is completely Victorian-the smooth rendering, the windows, door and slate roof are all of that period, and the other sides are similar or masked by addition. Inside, all original 48 An early-i7th century example is Beili-brith, Merthyr Cynog Brecon Houses, III, 70-72.