Allt-y-Bela

Allt-y-Bela, Llangwm, Monmouthshire, is a house of late medieval origin with additions from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries. During the early seventeenth century, it was owned by Roger Edwards, a wealthy Midlands merchant and the founder of Usk Grammar School. Edwards made significant alterations in the Renaissance style to the medieval cruck house. By the twentieth century, the house was in ruins until restored by the Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust in the early twenty-first century. Now owned by the garden designer Arne Maynard, the house is a Grade II* listed building recognising its significance as an "exceptionally important sub-medieval house with ambitious early renaissance additions."History and architectureThe house was built in the late-medieval period, the first datable reference being an "ovolo-moulded mullion window of 1599." This period also saw the construction of the three-storeyed parlour tower. This building was undertaken by Roger Edwards, a cloth merchant from the Midlands, who founded the grammar school at Usk. This phase of construction was investigated by Sir Cyril Fox and Lord Raglan in their multi-volume study Monmouthshire Houses. Fox and Raglan described the architectural style employed as Renaissance, identifying it as a significant development in Monmouthshire vernacular architecture.