The Lost Cottages - Mount, Caerhun Parish

This little cottage has a very special place in my heart. Visible from the lane, this is the first ruined cottage I ever saw, and one that we've always been given permission to go over and visit. All my life I knew it as simply 'the ruined cottage,' until I found out it has a name.

Mount is unusual on our lane for having an English name. It seems more likely that the place was called Mwnt, but was misspelled, as these names often are by English map makers and census takers. It's also a very small cottage - no more than one room with a lean-to on the end. Perhaps there was some wooden partitioning inside, but no evidence of this remains.

See a short video of the house here.

Mount sits on a little rocky outcrop of private land, at Ordnance Survey grid reference SH 7571 7038, with the lane on one side and the stream on the other.

Both fields above the house are lovely smooth pastures.

The trackway from the road cuts across the dip and seems to climb at an angle up the hill here, from right to left.

The north wall is a mixture of quite small stones and good sized ones. It almost looks as though it were built with leftovers.

These substantial cornerstones are nicely worked, so the house obviously wasn't just built of stones picked up from the land around.

Between the house and the road lies this long strip of marsh. In the right season, yellow flag lilies blossom among the rushes.

The trackway continues round to the south side of the house, with a low wall edging the track.

The small lean-to is very overgrown with brambles, but I don't remember there being anything of interest inside this small space.

The trackway at the south side opens up to the field at the west, with Pen y Gaer visible in the background.

Inside what seems to be a single-celled house, the only real visible feature is the large fireplace with impressive wood beam.

The north wall is partially tumbled, and probably doesn't survive high enough to see evidence of joist holes, if there were any. Is it possible there was a window where this gap is?

This is a very impressive fireplace for such a small dwelling, almost taking up the whole width of the building. The stones at the back look tight and nicely laid. There is a rather interesting article about the evolution of the fireplace at this link. The enlargement of the photo of a Welsh cottage fire is fascinating, although no doubt rather posher than the fireplace here.

At the east end of the house the wall is so tumbled it's impossible to tell if there were any features here.

The south wall of the house is almost entirely gone, with no sign of doorway or windows. It would be interesting to look under the turf to see if any flags or doorsills remain.

Some of the chimney survives, but the top was brought down not many years ago because it was becoming unsafe. It isn't uncommon to see sheep on top of the wall, eating the leaves up there.

In the fireplace, a short length of wood. Probably nothing to do with the original woodwork, though, as I imagine it would have rotted away by now.

In the right side of the fireplace is a nice little bread oven with brick lining.

A fair few of the bricks still survive in situ in the bread oven, although some have fallen to the floor of the oven. Something of the arch of bricks can be seen to the top left of the photo.

A fair amount of clumsily applied mortar survives on the bricks.

Some of the brickwork at the back is very nice. The bricks look quite rustic, of irregular sizes and shapes.

Looking out from the fireplace, you can see how little of the south wall remains.

On the back side of the beam some tool marks are visible, similar to the marks on the beam above the fire in our own cottage not far away.

A large burn mark on the back of the beam. Was this from a slightly out of control fire when the house was in use?

A large nail in the back of the beam. We use nails like this on the back of our beam for hanging wet clothes from. I wonder if its purpose was something similar?

There is still some render on the wall at the back of the fireplace, where it is probably protected from the worst of the weather.

Above the beam, again the wall is made of surprisingly small pieces of stone, as if the house were built from what was to hand.

There are two large holes in the front of the beam. This is the left hand one.

A close up of the hole on the right, showing how it goes a few inches into the wood. Presumably some kind of ironwork was attached.

The western wall of the house, with some of the stones from the chimney on the ground.

The western end of the house with the trackway to the right.

One of the good, flat fields behind the house, with a modern bungalow in the distance. Would the people of Mount have farmed this land? With almost no outbuildings it's hard to believe they had any kind of substantial property, but perhaps Mount was a labourers' cottage.

The census of 1861 shows this tiny cottage occupied by John Jones and his wife, daughter, and two others. Ten years later in 1871 the house was occupied by John Jones, wife, daughter, and four grandchildren. In the next two censuses the house is listed as unoccupied, and by 1901 it isn't mentioned. The house must have been empty from early 1881 at the very latest, meaning it has stood unoccupied for over 140 years. It's hard to imagine seven people living in this space.

On the south side of the house you can see the bedrock on top of which the house is built.

There's no well marked on the 1888-1913 map, although since the cottage was uninhabited by then it's possible a well wouldn't have been visible. The stream runs very close, however, just at the side of the field at the south.

The sun was interfering a bit, but its possible to make out the steep curve of the track around the east end of the house.

A little render remaining on the outside wall of the lean-to.

In the doorway to the lean-to this piece of wood is jammed into the wall. It's hard to tell if it's an original feature or something banged in later by the farmer to make a mounting for door fittings.

The corner of the north and west walls, with one nicely faced cornerstone, while the others look a bit more haphazard.

The trackway to the house is walled on the left, and runs across the top of the marshy dip towards the road.

 

 

The trackway runs directly to the road past an array of trees.

The gap in the wall can be seen, with a small hole drilled in the stone to the right, but this entranceway has been fenced and partially hedged for a long time, with a more convenient gateway to the field a little further up the slope.

Looking back at the house from the higher field gateway, which is also out of use now.

From the lane, no sign of the original entranceway can be seen at all, not even by a dip in the land.

Looking east down the road from the entranceway. An old, gnarled crabapple still bears fruit, just on the east side of the entrance, as a reminder of the family that perhaps once harvested the apples for preserves.