Lydart House

Cadw's description

Location

On high ground about 1.1km SE of Mitchel Troy church, at the W end of its own straight drive off the NW side of the B4293.

History

Apparently a late C17 or early C18 vernacular farmhouse, enlarged and radically remodelled in the mid to later C18 as the residence of a gentleman of modest means: perhaps Kingsmill Evans, a bencher of Gray's Inn who had inherited it from his father c.1730; or his eldest son, also Kingsmill, a colonel of the First Foot Guards.

Exterior

A long and elegant white-painted 2½-storey 6-window facade with a simple round-headed doorway offset slightly right of centre, hornless 12-pane sashed windows symmetrically disposed on both floors, and a set of 4 small eyebrow dormers (offset right) at the front of a hipped roof swept over prominent bracketed eaves. But this deceives the eye, because the core of the building is an earlier L-plan farmhouse composed of a 2-unit main range: the centre and right-hand end of the present house (as defined by a ridge chimney offset left of centre), with a short 1-unit rear wing to its left half. This rear wing is now enclosed by additions to its W end and N side, while on its S side the basement level of the C18 wing survives in the form of a raised terrace in the SW angle. The land sloping down from front to rear, there are several openings at basement level to a full suite of cellar rooms to the whole house; otherwise, the main features of interest at the back are a canted bay to the ground floor, with multi-paned sashed glazing, and a tripartite sashed window above that. The N side of the house has a large round-headed stair-window in the centre, sashed, with radiating glazing bars, and a full-height canted bay near the rear corner, which has on each floor a round-headed sashed window with radiating glazing bars, a painted keystone, and thin imposts run out round each side, where they cross the heads of small 8-pane sashes.

Interior

The front door opens into a hall-shaped room which has a low ceiling with relatively small boxed-in beams, and a fireplace in the left (S) end wall, where the present owners found a series of earlier fireplaces. In the present kitchen behind this wall there is a full-height cupboard in the angle with the front wall, which has an arched or vaulted stone roof and may represent the site of a former entrance doorway to the hall. The rear wall of the hall is very thick. Behind it is a circulation passage, at the N end of which is a dog-legged staircase with open string and very fine "chinoiserie" balustrading. The roof is of 4 structural bays on the main (N-S) axis, with exposed collar trusses and purlins, and a similar construction over the original rear wing.

Reason for designation

Included as an interesting example of the transformation of a relatively small late C17 or early C18 vernacular farmhouse, of which some fabric survives, into an elegant Georgian design.