- Heritage

Cavendish Hall

Listed Grade II, Cavendish Hall remains an excellent example of a Regency country house. According to White’s Directory of 1844, it is said to have been built by Thomas Halifax, once Mayor of Chester, for one of his sons. The coat of arms in the stained glass window does indeed show arms granted to a John Hallifax of Kenilworth in 1788, making a Hal(l)ifax connection plausible. According to the date on the window, and if the stained glass window in the cloakroom is in its primary position, the house was completed by 1802…

Cawood Castle

This Gatehouse, with a domestic wing to one side of it, is all that remains of Cawood Castle, the principal palace of the Archbishops of York from the 13th century, 200 years before the Gatehouse was built, until 1646 when the castle’s destruction was ordered by Parliament during the Civil War. The flat landscape seems an unlikely site for a fortified building, but this was an important cross-roads with a ferry over the Ouse on the road to York and a road running east-west along the riverbank…

Cawsey House, South Street

This fine merchant’s house, with its elaborately decorated shell hood over the door, appears in nearly every book on Great Torrington and most books on the buildings of Devon. It served as offices or a club from the 19th century, but it was once a private house, and one that its builder could be proud of…

The Chapel

Bible Christian services were first held in Lettaford in 1860, when it seems that permission was given to use the day school for Sunday prayer meetings. For about two years before this a small number of people had been meeting in cottages in hamlets nearby, but with a more regular meeting place the membership quickly rose to about twenty…

Chapel Cottage

A Bible Christian chapel is marked on the OS map of Coombe for 1885 and it had probably stood there already for some 20 years before that. Rev. Hawker was often vehement in his condemnation of the Dissenters but the influence of the Church of England had declined steadily and the Bible Christians were a Cornish offshoot of Wesleyan Methodism that moved so effectively to fill the vacuum…

The Chateau

The Château was built in 1747 – 8 for a prosperous lawyer from Gainsborough named Thomas Hutton. Mr Hutton and his father before him had looked after the local business affairs of the Earl of Abingdon who owned two small estates nearby (Gate Burton and Knaith) which had come into his family through an earlier marriage and were some distance from the rest of his very large property…

The China Tower

The China Tower was built in 1839 by Lady Louisa Rolle for John, Lord Rolle, a charming surprise birthday gift from a young wife to her much older husband. The Rolles were an ancient Devon family who amassed vast acreages in the county through marriage and purchase. Their main seats were at here at Bicton, and at Stevenstone, where we have another Landmark, The Library. Lord and Lady Rolle were passionate gardeners and together they created fine botanical gardens and a famous arboretum at Bicton…

Church Cottage

Church Cottage has a special place in the history of the Landmark Trust as well as Llandygwydd’s, as it was the very first building Landmark restored. In 1965, John Smith had the idea of setting up a charitable trust to rescue buildings in distress and then offering them for holidays to secure their future maintenance. He discussed his idea with architect Leonard Bedall Smith of Llangoedmon, who was able to suggest some candidates from his own local patch…

Clytha Castle

After the death of his wife in January 1787, William Jones moved back to Wales from London. He consoled himself during his bereavement by creating his own personal Elysium at Clytha, the estate he had bought some years earlier near his family home at Llanarth. The Castle formed the most important new feature, begun in 1790 and completed two years later…

The College

Situated towards the north end of the village on the east side of the road which joins the square and the triangular site of the old Market House, there is a group of buildings which because of their medieval form encourage the visitor to take a closer look…