Blacksmith's shop, office and stores at Powis Estate Timber Yard, with boundary wall to yard.

Cadw's description

Location

The smith's shop is approached from outside the timber yard, to the rear of the adjacent cottages: its upper storey is the office and stores, and it

Exterior

History: The smith's shop and office building was part of a programme of improvement carried out at the estate timber yard c1830-40.

Exterior: Gable faces the yard, built over the boundary wall. Lower courses of boundary wall are thin-coursed local sandstone, which is laid in bigger blocks in the upper courses: continuation of wall forming boundary with canal tow- path is brick, buttressed, and probably a later C19 reconstruction. The building itself is rough random local rubble, with slate roof, and brick star-shaped stacks (axial and end wall). Double doors with cambered lintel to first floor, approached via external stone stair-case with cast-iron rail. 3-light casement window (renewed in original camber- headed opening) alongside the doorway, and clock in gable apex. Ground-floor smith's shop entered from outside the yard in the E-facing elevation: doorway towards centre, wit small window to the left, and advanced gabled wing to the right. Rear elevation has 3 windows to ground floor with cambered heads, and long workshop-type window of overlapping small panes to the left.

Interior: Blacksmith's shop divided into 2 rooms - the main smithy with raised hearth against N gable wall - and the machine room. Gabled extension to front formerly housed shoeing pit. First floor office and store room accessed from external gable end staircase.

Included as a highly interesting component of the timberyard, the building is of particular interest for its design combining different functions; an exceptionally well-preserved blacksmith's shop.

References: Stephen Hughes, The Archaeology of the Montgomeryshire Canal, 1989, pp.74-5;
National Monuments Record, Aberystwyth.