Tyntyla Farmhouse

Cadw's description

Location

Sited high above mountain road from Ystrad to Rhondda Fach. Platform site set into hillside with agricultural range attached to downhill gable of farmhouse.

History

Dating currently depends on stylistic comparison of building features, most notably the plan form and massive chamfered timbers with feathered stops. These features suggest a date in the period 1580 to 1630.

Exterior

Tall partly coursed rubble gable end with larger roughly dressed quoins and timber lintels; built up with boulders to outer end. Modern slated roofs with some corrugated sheet patching. Wall is checked forward at junction of byre and rear wall of farmhouse which has an added slated lean-to kitchen. Hayloft opening on upper level to right above double boarded doors under dripcourse. Low 2-storey entrance front to farmhouse with one small window (modern glazing) under stone hood to each side of small gabled porch with timber lintel and narrowed inner doorway. Big square downhill chimney and original pine end stack flanked by gable window facing revetted uphill bank with walls linked to front garden.

Interior

Plan-form of farmhouse retains hall/kitchen with inner room on ground-floor, arched passage (formerly linked to cowhouse) and turning timber staircase flanking the large chimney, originally with inglenook. Massive ground-floor beams with feathered chamfers and similar smaller cross-beams; metal racking and hooks still in place. Fine timber arched doorway at first-floor landing to main stair with corbelled stone roof. Full attic storey reached up turning stone stair (over ground-floor arch beside chimney). Pegged D-frame roof trusses (boarded in) with chamfered feet embedded in walls of lower storey. Brick jamb under timber lintel to first floor connecting door from attic stair to hayloft over cowhouse. The cowhouse and loft has pegged D-frame trusses with trenched overlapping purlins and short inset sections of wall-plate. Limewashed interior of animal house with massive stepped buttress supporting (decayed) stop-chamfered beams. Stone flags to much of the ground floor areas.

Reason for designation

This is an exceptional, probably unique, survivor of the sub-medieval farmhouses in the Rhondda. The interior is especially interesting for the well-preserved features of plan-form, structural timbers and the communicating internal doorway linking the domestic and animal accommodation.