Bryn Owen Cottage

Cadw's description

Location

On the N side of a minor road between Redbrook and Higher Wych, approximately 400m NNW of Iscoyd Park.

History

Iscoyd Park was purchased in 1843 by Philip Lake Godsal, a Cheltenham coach builder, an estate of 202 acres (82 hectares) comprising mansion house with park, and cottages and smallholdings. Over subsequent decades farms were acquired from neighbouring landowners, mainly during the ownership of Philip William Godsal, who inherited in 1858 and died in 1896. In 1895 it was reported to the Royal Commission on Land in Wales and Monmouthshire that the Iscoyd Park estate, now expanded to 887 acres (359 hectares), had 9 farms. Of these 'six new farmhouses, bricked and slated, and homesteads to them, have been built new entirely' and 'sixteen cottages and buildings for pigs and cows have been erected'. The latter smallholdings include many that were built on the site of earlier smallholdings.

Bryn Owen is a smallholding dated 1900.

Exterior

A 1½-storey cottage of brick with dentil verge to a steep tile roof on overhanging eaves. The front has a boarded door on the L side under a freestone Tudor-arched lintel inscribed 'PTG 1900' (Philip Thomas Godsal). Windows have segmental heads. To the R of the doorway is a 3-light casement window. A very small window is beneath the eaves. In the L gable end facing the road is a 3-light casement window and 2 single casement windows in the attic. The 3-window rear has two 2-light casements, and a single casement in the rear lean-to. The lean-to has a fielded-panel door, below a 2-light attic window.

Interior

Not inspected.

Reason for designation

Listed for its special architectural interest as part of a well-preserved late C19 smallholding characteristic of the Iscoyd Park estate style, and for its contribution to the distinctive historic character of the district provided by surviving estate buildings, which together provide a good example of estate-sponsored improvement.