EV-0629 — RCAHMW record NA/GL/88/49: typed description of Tŷ Mawr / Great House Farm (December 1988)

Catalogue record

Transcript

Card header (handwritten and typed fields): "TŶ MAWR / GREAT HOUSE FARM" · Name · Class 10C · CO GL · NGR ST | 17 | SE, 16 [81] 73 [31] · Parish (Civil): Llandough · OS sheet 6-inch 47 NW · stamp "NATIONAL MONUMENTS RECORD FOR WALES" · "COPYRIGHT RESERVED" · reference NA/GL/88/49.

Great House farmhouse and barn formed an attractive group, built of local lias limestone, and occupied an historic site next to the parish church. Finds of medieval ironwork and pottery have been reported from the site (see separate note). Great House was the chief freehold farm of the parish and was occupied by the Vaughans, a minor gentry family, from the mid C16 until the latter part of the C18. Several memorial inscriptions relating to the family are preserved in the church and churchyard. In the early C19 the freehold was acquired by the Bute Estate and the manorial courts for Llandough and Leckwith were held in Great House.

Externally both farmhouse and barn appeared to be of nineteenth-century date. Internally, however, surviving vernacular detail - a blocked stone fireplace stair and ogee-stopped beams - suggested a seventeenth-century date for the house. The ground floor of the house was surveyed in unusual circumstances in 1974 by H.J.T. Much detail was then concealed and it was not possible to examine the first floor and roof trusses. The house remained partially recorded because of problems of access created by an ownership dispute. The house and farm buildings were suddenly and completely demolished by B.P. Properties Ltd. on 6th December 1988 amid considerable local controversy.

The plan of Great House was not published in the Inventory of Farmhouses & Cottages because of the incompleteness of the available information but it was classified as a sub-medieval house of direct-entry type (site no. 425). However, certain features suggested that the core of the house may have been medieval. The clearly-defined cross-passage end-chimney plan with masonry partitions and external wall batter (on the unreconstructed N side) had clear affinities with Brynwell, a medieval farmhouse in the neighbouring parish of Leckwith. Brynwell was built as a direct-entry, end-chimney, storeyed pre-Reformation house (Inventory, pp. 187, 192). Brynwell, like Great House, was modernised in the C19 by the Bute Estate but the medieval date of the house is clearly shown by a small first-floor cusped-head window and the remodelled roof trusses. Unfortunately it was not possible to examine the fabric of Great House before the demolition of the house. Examination of the rubble brought to light no new features except an ogee-stopped beam with torus, a form of decoration that is not particularly common in Glamorgan (Inventory, Map 50).

[one handwritten line, not read]

To summarise:
1. Possible medieval fabric incorporated in
2. C17 house associated with Vaughan family.
3. Great House reconstructed by Bute Estate in C19. Barn certainly C19 with king-post roof. Vernacular detail largely altered or concealed but basic plan retained. House probably heightened giving full attic. King-post roof apparently visible during demolition of house.

R. F. SUGGETT
December 1988

Transcription note: Typed description on a National Monuments Record for Wales card, with handwritten header fields. Transcribed in full from the copy held; line breaks not kept except in the summary. Every word inside the quotation is the card’s own; this site’s reading of it is under Interpretation, below. The summary and the signature were checked against the scanned copy of the same card in the Heneb record (source file 02038s_70255); item 1 of the summary ends as shown. The 6-inch sheet suffix is hard to read ("47 NW" read here). No names of private individuals appear.

Destination

• Where the original is held: Original card: RCAHMW, National Monuments Record of Wales, Aberystwyth, NA/GL/88/49. A scanned copy of the same record card ("copy of Suggett 1988", 5 pp.) is filed in the Heneb Historic Environment Record as source file 02038s_70255 of record GGAT02038s; that file was first seen online on 6 October 2026 (record last updated 29 September 2026).
• On this site: this artifact page, listed in the Evidence Register, and cited from the 1988: Possession and Demolition page.
• Image: the copy held is not reproduced here; the transcript stands in for it (third-party copyright).

Interpretation

The record places the house beside the parish church, dates its surviving detail to the seventeenth century, points to a possible medieval core comparable with Brynwell in Leckwith, and gives 6 December 1988 as the date of demolition. It cites the 1974 ground-floor survey by H. J. Thomas as made "in unusual circumstances" and left partial by access problems. The demolition month differs from the typed line on NA/GL/89/208 ("Nov. 1988"); both are shown as recorded, and the difference is listed as an open question.

The card’s typed text gives the early nineteenth century for the Bute Estate’s acquisition of the freehold, and in the same sentence records that the manorial courts for Llandough and Leckwith were held in Great House. The card cites no deed for the acquisition. No conveyance to Bute has been found, and the first record of the holding found so far is Bute’s own 1824 survey (EV-0211). Its summary line “Great House reconstructed by Bute Estate in C19” is likewise the recorder’s 1988 summary, not a dated record of the work. In our reading, the courts sat in the Williams family’s home: in testimony the Williams family acquired Tŷ Mawr in 1667, and the c.1841 tithe and the 1908 court leet record John Williams in Llandough. The card names the house and barn only and identifies no tithe parcel.

Related records

• Cites: EV-0630
• Cites: EV-0631
• Related record: EV-0047
• Open question: What They Don’t Say register (the two demolition dates)