Parc

Cadw's description

Location

Set within its original small field system on a track on the western edge of the small settlement of Cilgwyn.

History

Shown on the 1840 Tithe Map, the cottage is likely to have been built as a quarryworker's cottage forming part of the encroachment settlement associated with the expansion of the slate quarrying industry around Cilgwyn in the early C19; its attached cowhouse indicates that its occupants also supplemented their income by subsistence agriculture. The cottage was unoccupied at time of Survey.

Exterior

Single storey. House part of 2-room plan with later lean-to porches on left (at junction with cowhouse) and to right of centre; 2-unit cowhouse attached on left. Roughly coursed rubblestone with large granite blocks as foundations; slate roof with coped verges; integral end stack to right, ridge stack at junction with cowhouse and another to left actually in cowhouse, all of squared blocks with slate drips; left porch (giving access to house part) of red brick, the right of slate stone. 4-paned sashes on either side of stone porch and another window and door to left of brick porch in right part of cowhouse; left part of cowhouse has doorway converted to window and later doorway in gable end.

Interior

Large left room of house part has slate overmantel to large fireplace with incised panel and pie decoration and keystone with similar decoration; inserted late C19 cast-iron range by Griffiths Jones & Co. of Caernarfon. Screen by door. Right room also heated. Left stack (in cowhouse) has no fireplace, suggesting that its purpose is purely to give symmetry to the cottage and that it has never been functional. 2 A-frame trusses.

Reason for designation

Included as a largely unaltered smallholder's cottage, set within its own field system and typical of the small vernacular buildings of the region; forms part of an historically important settlement pattern associated with the early slate quarrying industry in this area.