The formal refinement of the Llanfyllin Workhouse is complemented by accomplished classical detailing on the entrance façade. This façade is elaborated beyond the bare necessities of the Commissioners’ models and its genesis is intriguing. Kempthorne produced model elevations of extreme plainness. Any ornamentation was strictly limited to the main entrance block. The preferred style was Classical, but in a simplified, unostentatious Georgian manner. When Llanfyllin Workhouse was being designed the style was losing favour to new tastes for Gothic, Tudor, and Jacobean revivals, all of which its architect Penson was ready to embrace as we see from his other work around this time.



Penson at Llanfyllin however looks even further back, to a much grander style of classicism fashionable at the end of the 18^th century and of which his old master Thomas Harrison was a leading exponent. It has been suggested that another important influence on this choice was the Chairman of the Guardians Martin Williams. It was a style he was very familiar with from his Jamaican plantations. Llanfyllin’s immediate predecessor, Penson’s Caersws workhouse, is a simpler affair. One can only speculate at the extent to which this impressive stone façade to the new workhouse reflected the private passions of its classically trained Architect, the taste of the Chairman, the self-image of the Local Guardians as a whole, the relative prosperity which paid for it, or the perceived need to soften the public face of this new and deeply controversial institution. It is unlikely though that its architectural refinements would have significantly lessened the awe its size and form must have engendered in those falling into poverty.’

The Workhouse is built of locally quarried rubble with imported stone dressings on the entrance front and an inner skin of brick, made on the site. The twin front entrances, for Guardians and others, are repeated at Penson’s Caersws workhouse and also at St Asaph, for which he made designs.

This photograph shows the Boys’ Yard after it was taken over as the Master’s Garden: his family are playing croquet. The boys’ swing remains on the left. The taller Master’s House with its cupola dominates the scene: its diagonally placed windows afford uninterrupted views of the yards below.

Part of the range of workshops in the Men’s Yard has been demolished. Many of the windows were altered and their sills lowered in the 1960s: a few of the original cast iron frames survive. However the building is thought to be the finest of Britain’s surviving New Poor Law workhouses and an excellent example of Penson’s work. 

Interior

The building was much altered internally in the post-war period when it served as a care home, but retains its distinctive layout. Two original staircases remain. Internal walls show exposed traces of early colour-wash with a dado of oil paint. Plaster cornices survive in the entrance hall and may reflect the original design.