Old Gwernyfed Manor

"One of Brecon's Best Set Pieces"

 

Old Gwernyfed Manor is named after the great Celtic longhouse home for a Welsh chieftain and his clan. There has been a house on the site since Norman times and it is the major gentry house of the area. A medieval house was replaced by another in about 1450 which forms the basis of the present manor. As quoted in Pevsnor - The Manor was

modernised in 1590 when three wings were added to the house, transforming its shape

from the letter “I” to a symmetrical “E”, in honour of Elizabeth the reigning Queen.

 

Queen Elizabeth would have been pleased to see the great spiral staircase newly built around the huge oaken post. The oak was a mast from a ship of the wrecked Spanish Armada, washed up on the Welsh shore.

 

The main rooms were in the south west wing until a fire in c. 1780 since which the wing has been a shell. On the north west front of the house the fenestration has been disrupted by the erection of a large stone stack dating from the early nineteenth century and may mark the transition from Manor to farmhouse. Inside the house a date on the fireplace of 1680, provides evidence for later alterations of the house.

 

It is reputed that, William Shakespeare delighted in some of the other wood in the

house: he carved a cryptic message on the oaken Minstrel’s Screen. It was correctly

deciphered only a few years ago by a British Intelligence officer who was staying at Old

Gwernyfed Manor.