Qualla: Penarth Fawr

Penarth Fawr: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit A.D.Hope, CC BY 4.0. Dendrochronology can date a felled oak to a specific year by counting its rings against a master sequence. When archaeologists tested the timbers of Penarth Fawr in the late twentieth century, the oaks turned out to have been cut after 1476. Which means the hall was built for Hywel ap Madog around 1480, give or take, in the years before the Wars of the Roses ended at Bosworth. Five and a half centuries later the roof timbers are still in place. The spere truss -- the elaborate medieval screen that separates the hall proper from its entrance passage -- is the westernmost surviving example in Wales and the only one in Caernarfonshire. Cadw, the Welsh historic environment service, calls Penarth Fawr 'one of the most important medieval gentry houses to survive in Wales.'

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Image: A.D.Hope | CC BY 4.0

Penarth Fawr: Born in a Feud

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ijanderson977, Public domain. Hywel ap Madog's father, Madog ap Hywel, did not die peacefully at Penarth. He died fighting for the House of York during the Wars of the Roses, as a captain under his uncle Owain Tudor -- the same Owain Tudor whose grandson would become King Henry VII. The fourteenth and fifteen...

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Image: Ijanderson977 | Public domain

Penarth Fawr: The Spere and the Sundial

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit A.D.Hope, CC BY 4.0. The most important feature of the house is the spere. A spere is a full-height screen that divides the hall from the entrance passage, taking the form of two short side-walls with a wide opening between them. Only about twenty examples survive in Wales, almost all in the north-ea...

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Image: A.D.Hope | CC BY 4.0

Penarth Fawr: Sheriff Gwyn's Fireplace

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit A.D.Hope, CC BY 4.0. By 1615 the open hearth had become old-fashioned, and Hugh Gwyn -- a descendant of Hywel ap Madog who served as High Sheriff of Caernarvonshire in 1599-1600 -- inserted a proper fireplace into the east wall. A carved stone panel above it bears his arms and the date. Gwyn or one o...

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Image: A.D.Hope | CC BY 4.0

Penarth Fawr: Evans Brings It Back

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Colin Park, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1886 the house was bought by Owen Evans. Fifty years later, in 1936, his descendant William Evans undertook a significant restoration. Evans removed the seventeenth-century floor that had divided the medieval hall, took out other later accretions, and returned the principal sp...

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Image: Colin Park | CC BY-SA 2.0