Tŷ Mawr

Descended from the Alo ap Rhiwallon family (who had settled there in the 13th century), the builder of Tŷ Mawr was probably Dafydd ap Gwilym, the great-great-grandson of Alo ap Rhiwallon. The Lloyd family became the principal landowners in the Trefnant and eventually in 1911 all of Trefnant township had been acquired by the Earl of Powis's estates.

The limewashed box-framed house, four bays long, sits on a stone platform built into the hillside, under a broad half-hipped roof (now replaced with tiles rather than slates, for which evidence was found in the archaeological excavations thatch). The principal timbers are tree-ring dated to 1460: dendrochronology has also provided dates of 1594, when a first floor was inserted within the hall, and 1631 when the internal timber-framed smoke-hood was added. The two trusses within the hall are a single pair of chamfered wooden speres or posts set in the floor and forming a box-frame which carries the roof, and a pair of arch-braced base-crucks with two tiers of cusped struts above the…