West farmyard range at Tan-y-bwlch

Cadw's description

Location

The square farmyard at Tan-y-bwlch lies apart and some 80m N of the farmhouse.

History

The earlier farmhouse at Tan-y-bwlch became the home farm for the Buckley estate at Dinas Mawddwy from the later 1860s. Sir Edmund Buckley, son of a wealthy Manchester business man planned to develop the area with appropriate industries, building a fine Romantic Elizabethan house, Plas Dinas, and shortly after, workers cottages, a hotel, and his home farm. The new planned square of farm buildings he undertook entirely in in-situ concrete construction, a new material which was being pioneered at about the same time by Lord Sudely at Gregynog, Powys. When the estate was sold in 1878, the buildings were partly completed and comprised 'stalls for 13 oxen, and for a like number of young cattle, calf kits; engine and boiler room, machine house and cutting room, loose box with granary and hay and straw lofts over'. The concrete used here is a no-fines concrete using slate quarry waste, presumably from Buckley's own quarry, as an aggregate, cast between shutters in lifts of some 60cm, and without provision for linear movement. The walls are of a consistent 230-250mm thickness throughout. There is no indication of rendering internally or externally, but they may once have been limewashed.

Exterior

The W range forming the square farmyard at Tan-y-bwlch consists of stabling and loose-boxes. Built of in-situ concrete with slate roofs. It has 5 raised and gabled dormers with deep oversailing eaves, characteristic of the estate work, and on the ground floor, 5 enlarged openings replacing the original arrangement. The central section is lofted, and the N end is fitted out as a dwelling, perhaps for the farm manager. The walls of this section are rendered, and it has an external chimney stack on the N (right) gable end, with the entrance door to the right. Timber windows. The W range is separated from the N range by a driftway.

Interior

Various cross walls of concrete, and some surviving cast iron stable fittings by Thomas & Co, Oswestry.

Reason for designation

Included as a part of a well-planned mid-later C19 estate farmyard, and one of special interest where in-situ concrete has been used for the whole construction; a very early example of the successful and long lasting use of this technique.