Welsh Journals

CIL-EOS ISAF A LATE MEDIEVAL MONTGOMERYSHIRE LONG- HOUSE S. R. JONES, F.S.A. This article is intended as a contribution to the debate on the long-house, a debate, initiated seven years ago in 'Culture and Environment'. One party, in the persons of Messrs P. Smith Ffrancong Lloyd and B. Evans have maintained a more sceptical attitude to its distribution, and even its existence, than Dr Iorwerth Peate who first defined the type. The other party, represented by myself and Mr J. T. Smith, have defended his concept in a series of articles, mostly relating to Breconshire. 2 The house to be described has an important bearing on this controversy with regard to the antiquity, distribution and detailed form of the long-house type. INTRODUCTION Cil-eos Isaf, a derelict farmhouse in the parish of Pennant, north-west Montgomeryshire (Grid Ref SIo96252), is a building of the highest interest, being apparently of late medieval date and containing in its simple rectangular plan the unusual alternation of cruck and post-and-truss construction.3 For- merly of timber-framing until the later eighteenth century, when a wholesale rebuilding in stone of the side walls occurred, the house, when discovered in 1967, fortunately retained some of its original features. Of these perhaps the most remarkable were the bench ends, the sole surviving portions of the high or principal seat in the hall, which, though not itself raised above the general floor level, corresponded to a dais in the larger halls-whilst at the lower end of the same apartment, the partition truss there was framed in such a way as 1 P. Smith "The Long-House and the Laithe-House" in Culture and Environment: Essays in Honour of Sir Cyril Fox 1963. An acknowledgement, p. 415, lists those field workers, notably the late Mr. Ffrangcon Lloyd, a major contributor, who shared similar doubts at that date. Mr. Smith discussing N. Wales pp 425-428 does, however, draw attention to a medieval house, Hafod-Ysbyty, near Ffestiniog (fig. 96) a building which he claims to be "unfortunately un- typical" but "a most unusual example of an intercommunicating house-and-byre homestead of ancient date and single build". Also Welsh Folk Museum Handbook (1965), 26-27, and Iorwerth C. Peate, "Hendre'r-ywydd-Uchaf", Welsh Folk Museum reprinted from Trans. Denb. Hist. Soc., 1962. 2 S. R. Jones and J. T. Smith "Houses of Breconshire", Brycheiniog, Vols. IX-XII. Parts I-IV. 3 For an example from Monmouthshire see Fox and Raglan, Mon Houses. Vol. I, figs. 25, 26. Little Ton, Llanvapley. "Post-and-truss" is perhaps to be preferred to "framed" because this better explains the triangular framework of the truss above a spanning tie-beam that is supported at each side-wall by a principal post. However, in the description, the term "framed truss" has been retained for convenience.