Pentreheylin stood between the River Vyrnwy and the Montgomeryshire Canal west of Llandysilio. It was the ancient home of the Heylin family.

John James Turner commissioned Penson to build a new house around 1830, with good stone facing over a stone core. The materials are said to have been transported by canal. The style was that of around 1600, but there was none of the lively detail of Penson’s ‘Jacobean’ houses. Instead the house was quite austere. It was two-storeyed and built of large ashlar blocks: the gables had simple copings and ornamentation was limited to hood moulds over the straight-headed, mullioned windows. The clustered chimneys were similarly plain. Perhaps this reflected the wishes of the client. From photographs the plan appears rambling: it is unclear whether the house was of one build. The rendered porch may have been an addition.

In the early 20^th Century the house was bought by Henry Platt Hall, a Director and later Chairman of Platt Bros, textile machinery manufacturers in Lancashire. He was a celebrated numismatist with one of the finest coin collections in Britain. One of his sons earned a posthumous VC in the Great War.

The house was sold in 1950 and again in 1955. It was later demolished by a planned explosion. It is reported that it took two attempts for complete demolition. Thomas Lloyd writes: ‘Half blown up, the entirety of the stonework fell inextricably into the cellars and the rest was left to house pigs.’

Text: John Hainsworth

The site today

Photographs at https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/571416 and https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/570453 show what may have been ancillary buildings in brick. They have been divided into flats.

Sources

The Lost Houses of Wales, Thomas Lloyd, 1987

The Buildings of Wales, Powys, Scourfield and Haslam 2013

https://coflein.gov.uk/en/site/29751/details/pentreheylin-hall

http://www.stanwardine.com/cgi-bin/tree.pl?report=detail&indi=stanwardine@I14@