The Park - A Rare Gem at Merrion - Part 7

A Rare Survival of a Seventeenth Century Cottage in the Parish of St. Twynnells, Pembrokeshire

The Roof


Many of the old buildings in Pembrokeshire are difficult to date. This largely because of the lack of features that can be dated  stylistically. In the case of wooden features this is largely because for many buildings, whilst the stonework survives, any timber work has long been replaced or just rotted away when exposed to the wild, windy and wet elements.

In rural Pembrokeshire, thatched roofs of one sort or another were ubiquitous, particularly in rural areas. Many of the sketches and paintings by Charles Norris of buildings in and around Tenby, and elsewhere in South Pembrokeshire, show such roofs, many even then in decay. This early nineteenth century watercolour by Norris of St Florence, near Tenby, shows such houses.

The tin roof on the northern end of The Park is an indicator that at some point the house was thatched, and indeed the much decayed thatch beneath the tin is still there. There are other buildings, with tin roofs covering old thatch elsewhere in west Wales. The picture below is of a very small semi-detached cottage at Henllan Amgoed just over the border in Carmarthenshire. This building is on the market as I write this and needs listing and saving. It is another gem.
 Loving the tin shed too!

Thatched roofs could also be found up until not too long ago in the north of Pembrokeshire. The photographs below show two examples that I came across near Brawdy in North Pembrokeshire in the early 1980s. The photographs also serve to show the difference in building styles between this area and the good quality agricultural land around Castlemartin and Stackpole in the south of Pembrokeshire.

The cottage near Brawdy with the tin roof covering very decayed thatch. c1982

The crude roof timbers supporting the thatch. The hessian sacking hanging down once hid the thatch from view.

A view along the length of the cottage from the chimney end showing a timber an plaster partition and many collapsed floor boards from the crog loft(?).

Another view as above, but this time showing the darker remains of straw rope under-hatch nearer the camera

The house as it is today.

 Now to get back to The Park at St Twynnells. The northern end of the house, as mentioned above, still has the thatch in situ beneath the tin roof. As you go through the front door and look up, the thatch immediately catches your eye!

Looking towards the north gable of The Park. The large hearth area, as shown in Part 6, is just out of sight below this shot.

A closer look at the thatch under the west facing tin roof. The roof timbers seem slight, but the main rafters are chamfered, as are the collars pegged to the rafters. In places straw(?) rope securing the thatch can be seen looped around the very slight purlins.

The surviving timber framed lathe and plaster partition in the roof of The Park that separates the former loft space from the living area of the cottage. The slight remains of the floor of the loft can be seen on the right. The loft would have been reached by a ladder.

The main living room come kitchen of The Park. This is still under the thatched part of the house, but the thatch has been concealed behind plank boarding affixed to the roof trusses. The hooks hanging down by the range were used for curing bacon. The lateral outshut is on the right hand side, just behind the wooden pallet. Here the boarding has dropped from its original position.

The lateral outshut at at The Park showing the collapsing roof lining in this part of the house.

A reconstruction of the roofing arrangement of The Parke, in this view looking north from the southern end of the kitchen/living room.

The new owners of The Park are keen to restore the roof with thatch. The thatch may well give up secrets about the age of the roof and the type of straw used in its construction. They may even grow the specialist straw on one of the fields behind the house!

The winter storms have almost seen the roof finally succumb to the elements, but the determined efforts of the owners have seen that it will stay on for a little longer whilst it continues to give up the secrets of it construction.


In Part 8 of this series of posts, we will look at the roof over the southern "parlour". This is a slate roof, with a different construction style to that in the northern part of the house.