THE ROYAL COMMISSION ON THE ANCIENT AND HISTORICAL MONUMENTS OF WALES
The Hospice, Newcastle Bridgend, NPRN 19927
The Hospice is a C16th house of remarkable interest both for the completeness of its plan and for the
range of the surviving architectural detail. The house is sited on the roadside near the parish church of
Newcastle, once an important settlement although not a borough. The house has only latterly been
called name current in the C19th was more prosaically ‘Church House’. The house was first described
as a hospice by W de Gray Birch, who drew attention to the carved stones on the porch which
apparently bear the emblems of the Knights Hospitallers (History of Margam Abbey [1897], p. 391): a
Greek cross, eagle and sacred monogram. There was however no known association between the
Hospice and the Knights Hospitallers until the house was purchased by the Order in the C20th (see David
Phillips, The Story of St Illtyd’s Church Bridgend [c.1930]; copy in NMRW).
Description
The plan of the house is distinctive. It has a hearth-passage plan: i.e. the principal doorway opens into a
cross-passage behind the hall fireplace between hall and outer room. The plan is closely related to the
hierarchical late-medieval hall-house plan which has outer bay – passage – hall – inner bay in sequence.
However at The Hospice there is no inner room and the functions of the inner-bay have been
transferred to a great chamber on the first floor. The principal entrance was enhanced by a porch which
retains the stone seats flanking the passage. The house is fully storeyed with a single room open to the
roof above the hall, and has a loft above the first-floor great chamber.
The Hospice belongs to the first generation of early storeyed houses that were built in the first half of
the sixteenth century, generally by the gentry and clerical elite. The architectural detail is
correspondingly fine with abundant four-centred dressed-stone doorways and arched windows of
Glamorgan type (noted on distribution maps in Farmhouses and Cottages) At The Hospice the
architectural detail is not only of high quality but increasingly lavish timber detail signals the hierarchy of
rooms. The twin outer service rooms have broad but plain chamfered beams. The hall ceiling and
fireplace beams are roll moulded with joists having diagonal stops. On the first floor the principal (great
chamber) has roll-moulded beams and twin crenellated wall-beams. The roof has relatively plain collarbeam trusses with the regionally distinctive bent-footed principal rafters clearly visible in the wall. In
this early storeyed house the roofs are plain but the ceiling beams are elaborate.
Particular interest must attach to the crenellated beams as indicators of status. Crenellated beams were
widely distributed but rather rare status indicator in C15th halls in England and Wales. Several tree-ring
dated examples ranging from 1390-1520 from Kent are noted in The House Within (RCHME, 1994), pp.
116-17. Only two examples were found during the exhaustive survey of Radnorshire (Houses and
History in the March of Wales, esp. Bryndraenog). The crenellated beams at The Hospice are the only
known domestic examples in Glamorgan although crenellated wallplates are found in churches. On the
ground-floor one crenellated beam is at the dais end of the hall. In the first-floor great chamber there
are crenellated beams at both ends of the room.
The crenellated beams at The Hospice are at the end of the medieval tradition. They indicate the high
status of the house and also suggest a construction date in the early/mid-C16th date. Tree-ring dating
richard.suggett@rcahmw.gov.uk
THE ROYAL COMMISSION ON THE ANCIENT AND HISTORICAL MONUMENTS OF WALES
for a comparable house at Coldbrook (near Raglan), a high-status hearth-passage house with rollmoulded beams, shows that it was completed about 1538 (Vernacular Architecture 43, p.106).
Newcastle was a small town but The Hospice is not an obviously urban house. Rather it belongs to the
first generation of storeyed houses, often found in rural areas, which provided opportunities for
experiments in planning. At The Hospice it is noteworthy that the Great Chamber rather than the
ground-floor Hall is the principal room and that access to it could be gained directly from a mural
staircase at the end of the passage. The Great Chamber has the comfort of a latrine in the NW corner.
The Hospice illustrates in a particularly clear way the development of the storeyed house in the C16th
and the importance of the new first-floor chambers.
Further investigation
The two stone panels formerly fixed to the front elevation but now re-set in the passage need further
investigation, especially of the religious symbolism. The origin of the stone needs identification. A local
stone (?Quarella) would establish that the panels have not been imported. Assessment of the timber for
tree-ring dating is important to securely date the building.
Plans
A full survey of The Hospice has been made by the Royal Commission and published in Farmhouses and
Cottages of Glamorgan (1988), pp. 300-301 (figs B41-42). The original survey drawings are held in the
National Monuments Record of Wales along with some record photographs.
Visited at the suggestion of Richard Keen and Andy Marvell.
Richard Suggett, RCAHMW, May 2014.
richard.suggett@rcahmw.gov.uk