Great Panta Farmhouse

Cadw's description

Location

It is situated about 1100m north east of Devauden Green, but it is approached from the east off the Tintern Road through Panta Grange Farm.

History

This building is very difficult to interpret because it is so overgrown, and has been described by RCAHMW as an C18 cattle-byre with a small single roomed living unit at one end'. However, it could be an early C17 single cell house with cow-house in line under the same roof and both entered from the front. There is no evidence of a stair, which may have been a ladder beside the stack, but the upper floor walls were plastered at some time, as was the large room over the cow-house. This room could not, however, be entered from the housepart and may have been made into a bedroom when the range was extended in the early/mid C 19 with a second cow-house and a stable, or perhaps a bull-house, with a granary over both; the granary being entered by an external stair on the gable, the others through the front. The whole roof has been completely renewed in the C20. The house was abandoned as a farm in the 1950s.

Exterior

A long rectangular range with the older section at the left hand end. Built wholly of roughly squared sandstone rubble, but the two halves of the building are quite distinct, the rubble walling of the older part being greyer and squarer, while the later part is pinker; a relatively modern Welsh slate roof over all. The older section is one-and-a-half storeys with no upper floor openings in the front, the younger is two storeys. From the left, a plain rectangular window, a plain doorway into the housepart, a window and doorway to the cow-house. The other openings have been altered in the C19 but this final one is of massive construction with two stones to either jamb and a very large lintel not squared at the top like a fire lintel. There is no joinery apart from a broken door. To the right is a window and a door to the cow-house and a narrow window and a doorway to the stable; there are two windows under the eaves above. There is an upper floor doorway to the granary on the gable end. The left hand gable end has a large internal stack, the gable is obscured by ivy. The rear elevation was originally probably blind but there is a window and a large damaged opening.

Interior

The housepart on the left has a single narrow room with a massive internal stack containing a large fireplace with huge lintel stone and relieving arch above. There is one surviving floor beam and a joist to mark the upper floor, which appears to have been reached by a ladder. Both rooms retain some wall plaster. A doorway leads to the cow-house; this is plain with a timber lintel. The cow-house retains its C19 tiled floor with drains. Again a floor beam survives for the room above, which also retains some plaster. Was this a best bedroom, a rare feature of Monmouthshire C17 houses; but it seems rather too low status a house to have one? There are wall cupboards and what would have been a window in the gable, but access is uncertain, whether as a C17 room or a C19 one. A further door in the gable wall leads down two steps to the added C19 cow-house, which also has a tiled floor and drains, as does the stable. The overall roof has been wholly replaced with two tiers of sawn purlins and rafters carrying the slates.

Reason for designation

Included for special interest as an early C17 single roomed farmhouse with an in-line cow-house which has been extended into a much larger building in the C19 and never properly modernized.