Arenig Fawr, Merioneth - Royal Commission on the Ancient and ...

Permanent farmsteads
There are permanent farmsteads in the Lliw valley and at Amnodd, all on the west side
of the <strong>Arenig</strong> <strong>Fawr</strong> ridge and all of them above 400m AOD. The highest is Amnodd
Wen (nprn 511409) at 451m AOD, where there is a succession of three farmhouses.
The earliest is a single-storey house with external fireplace, which was clearly an
addition (nprn 511016). The house is now roofless and its windows and doors have
been removed, but its roof slates have been carefully stacked as if in preparation for
reinstatement. This first house was replaced in the mid-nineteenth century by an
adjacent 2-storey house, now ruinous (nprn 511015). It stands on a substantial platform
retained by a stone wall facing the yard. In the 1890s a third house was added, also 2-
storey and now ruinous (nprn 511014). It was clearly one of a pair with Amnodd Bwll
farmhouse, described below. An outdoor privy in the retaining wall of the forecourt
probably belongs to this latter phase (nprn 511020). The farm buildings in the yard,
through which a track passes, belong to the later nineteenth century and are ruinous
(nprn 511013).
At Amnodd Bwll farm the house is the latest of the surviving buildings (nprn 511050). It
was built in the 1890s to the same design as Amnodd Wen farm, a 2-storey house of
rock-face stone, with casement windows, a roof of thin slates with barge boards, and
projecting back kitchen. With Amnodd Wen it clearly represents a substantial
investment in permanent farming in the nineteenth century. The house is uninhabited
but is still roofed and retains its windows and doors. Only one of the farm buildings in
the yard is roofed (nprn 511051), with thin slates, and is probably one of the buildings
shown on the 1838 Tithe plan. It was probably a cow house but it has external steps to
the loft.
Amnodd Bwll and Amnodd Wen were primarily cattle and sheep farms. Two features of
the enclosed pasture are the use of shelter walls and the use of the field cowhouse, or
beudy, which are characteristic of North Wales farms. Such buildings date at least from
the mid eighteenth century, were common in north Wales by the nineteenth century
and were described by Thomas Rowlandson in 1847: ‘the cattle are not all brought to
the homestead during the winter, but are housed in detached buildings at some
distance from each other, with a herdsman to look after each lot’ (quoted in Wiliam
1986, 89-90). According to Rowlandson they should be large enough to accommodate
up to eight cattle, and each has a small attached yard (fig 12). The yard contained the
haystack that was fed to the animals inside. Several of these buildings were found,
mostly unroofed but with the walls standing to near full height. All are above 400m and
the highest is at 485m AOD (nprn 511022). They are similar to other cow houses found
in north Wales (Wiliam 1986, fig 75a). In plan they measure 11m by 6m with walls
standing up to 1.8m high to the eaves, and some of them may have had lofts as there
are openings in the gables. Entrance was normally in the downhill gable end, which
facilitated mucking out. Another doorway opened into the hay yard. While the beudy is
well built (perhaps professionally) the attached yard walls are not integrated and are of
much rougher construction, like the example at Beudy y’r Cwm (nprn 511064). Where
roof structure has survived they can be seen to have sawn king-post trusses of the
nineteenth century. Only the roofless examples were therefore possibly built before
1800.
There are four cowhouses attached to Amnodd Bwll farm. The Ordnance Survey
indicates that two of them (nprn 511049, 511064) remained roofed and were
presumably still in use at the end of the nineteenth century, while the other two (nprn
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