Ty Cwrdd Bach

Cadw's description

Location

Northeast of Tredafydd Uchaf on the east side of the road from Pen-Rhiw to Dinas Cross.

History

Ty Cwrdd Bach (‘small meeting house’ in English) is an eco-house built 1972-1974 by Christopher Day (1942-2019) as a home for his own family, incorporating the ruins of a former Calvinistic Methodist Chapel.

Christopher Day was a pioneer of eco-architecture, aiming to move away from mass-produced styles and materials in order to build vernacular-style buildings sensitive to their surroundings, with hand-crafted details and low carbon footprints. Influenced by the ideas of Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy, he wanted to create environments that would nurture the soul and nourish the spirit. In the 1960s there was growing concern about the environmental consequences of the fossil fuel economy, and in 1970 Day left a position teaching architecture in London to study organic agriculture at Emerson College before moving to Pembrokeshire in 1972, with the aim of living off-grid and off his own produce.

Capel Tredafydd was built in 1792 and closed in 1898. By 1905 its roof was caving in and by the 1970s it had been reduced to a set of overgrown semi-collapsed walls, which Christopher Day purchased in 1972. He later said his aim was “to build a home out of this ruin and yet retain its essential qualities - quietness, unobtrusiveness, the feeling of being rooted in the earth, above all this quality of timeless belonging to its surroundings.” The house has a private spring supplying water and is supplied with electricity from a small wind turbine and solar panels. The house began Day’s career as a practicing architect. Most of his commissions in Wales were for private houses, but his larger projects were the Rudolf Steiner School in Maenclochog and the Ffald y Brenin Christian Retreat Centre in Cwm Gwaun. The grass roof built in 1974 was renovated and replanted with sedum in 2003.

Exterior

Single storey house with rubble stone walls. Green irregularly pitched roof planted with sedum, with long shallow pitch to rear and timber fascias. Three large sculptural pyramid-like rubble stone stacks with lead flashings. Lead rainwater goods. Front contains the most substantial wall of the former chapel with three original central window openings flanked by a doorway each side. These front windows have been chamfered by insertion of concrete lintels. Left gable wall curves into the rear using recycled stone found in situ. Seven windows of irregular size, shape and placement in this aspect; a simple rectangular light set low towards the front, two very small lights near gable apex, one a trapezoid, to left below this an irregular pentagon with concrete lintel begins a sequence of smaller lights descending in height with the curve to the rear wall. Roofline forms a gentle curve over central rear door with clerestory windows below. Rear storage bins to either side of rear door, one of them added after 1974, green roofs planted with grass. Right gable wall is obtuse and returns to the rear with a chamfered corner. Five lights in this gable with the trapezoids under the eaves and two rectangular openings below, the larger with concrete lintel. All windows are timber casements, double glazed. Original 1974 Dutch door to front right has been replaced.

Interior

Not inspected, photographs from the architect’s publications show an exposed timber frame and hard wood floors. Windows in deep openings through thick walls covered in rough plaster worked by hand to form small shelves and niches. Generally single storey but with stone steps between some rooms.

Reason for designation

Listed for special architectural interest as an important work of late C20 eco-architecture by one of its chief exponents in Wales. Ty Cwrdd Bach is also of special historic interest as Christopher Day’s first building, built as his own family home, and as representing the growing environmental concerns of the early 1970s.