Groes Las

Cadw's description

Location

c 75km N of Llanfair, on the R hand side of the minor road to Harlech which runs to the E of, and parallel to, the A496. The house is separated from the farmyard by a roughly walled garden enclosure.

History

Groes las is a small farmstead of characteristic late eighteenth or early nineteenth century type. There is a graffiti date of 1818 on one of the farm-buildings, but little direct dating evidence for the house, though a date of c1800 seems likely. In course of restoration and alteration, 2003.

Exterior

Small single storey farmhouse, of 2-unit plan. Rubble-built, originally limewashed. Random slate roof (the slates removed on inspection, August 2003); boulder copings to gables, and chimneys at each gable end with dripstones. Doorway offset to right, flanked by modern windows in original openings with stone lintels. Later outshut to rear.

Interior

Later C19 tongue and groove partitions created a 3 room plan, with staircase at centre, and small room to its rear (perhaps a service room?); original layout was probaby simply 2 rooms, the main room to the right, with large fireplace and bread oven, with chamfered timber bressumer over. Smaller parlour to left, also formerly heated (fireplace now obscured). Beams and joists all limewashed.

Upstairs, now a single room, with small fireplace over parlour; two collar trusses very crudely pegged and minimally jointed, and rough purlins.

Reason for designation

Listed as a small dwelling of simple vernacular character, which is the centre of an exceptionally well-preserved farmstead group.