Penwennol Dinas - the Georges and their pigsty
Construction technique
Stone-built corbelled roof-structures are found across Wales and Ireland, and were used variously in pigsties, poultry-houses and for storing milk and potatoes. Four examples have been found in north Pembrokeshire: at Maenoffariaid, south of Pontyglasier; Llanfyrn Farm, south of Abereiddy; Tal-Y-Gaer, in the north-west of Pencaer; and at Penwennol in Dinas.
The two advantages of this ancient* technique were that no mortar was needed to bond the stonework, and no timber required to support the roof. The internal domed structure gave inherent stability, and was well suited to dry-stone construction by masons, who could often utilise local stone.
The walls were usually laid out as a circle, though occasionally, as at Llanfyrn, a rectangular plan was used. Stone roofing slabs were carefully laid around the top of the walls, sloping slightly downwards, to shed rainwater outwards. Then successive layers were stepped in gradually, to form a corbelled dome with a central finishing slab. Sometimes a second covering of stone tiles would provide further protection against the elements. At Penwennol the roof corbelling can only be seen from the circular interior, which is 7-8 feet diameter.
Most sties had an enclosed dry-stone pen with a gateway, to allow the owner to tend to the animals, as shown in the pigsty relocated from Pontypridd to St Fagans. When first built, the Penwennol sty had no such pen.
The Georges at Penwennol
The Penwennol structure was built into the bank on the south side of the footpath leading eastwards from the Dinas viewpoint to the Fron. Opposite are the barely-visible remains of a long shed and a two-storey house which, for seventy years, formed the home of the George family.
Around 1885, master-mason William George moved, with wife Anne and family to the cottage of Penwennol Farm, with over twenty acres and fine views north over the coast and village. By 1900 he and his sons had built a new house, converted the cottage to animal housing and a workshop, and built the pigsty. Field-stones were gathered from the common using a wheelbarrow and horse and cart. In the following decades much of the family income derived from the men’s paid work as builders around the county.
Years later William and Anne’s descendants established a ten-acre smallholding based on 1 Maesteg in the village. William George died at 78 in 1920 and his wife Anne at 76 in 1923, after bearing nine children.
Memory
In 2011, William’s grandson Dai George b1923, recalled his youth at the farm when his aunt Eleanor kept dairy cattle, and free-range pigs, goats and chickens. Lacking its own permanent water supply, Penwennol cattle were regularly driven down to the Fron spring and grazed on Frondeg land. Dai would collect water from the Fron by horse-and-cart. He loved horse-riding; “better than a bike” he would often say. Every year Eleanor acquired two young weaners from livestock dealer Ezer Thomas in Springhill and fattened them in the sty on whey and food-scraps. As was commonplace on farms up to the mid 1950s, the Georges killed a pig each year for the larder.
Dai remembered that, in the late 1930s the ground sloped upwards to the pigsty doorway, so that the animals could easily enter the sty at nightfall. There was no walled yard then, nor steps. Returning from army service in 1947, he found that the ground there had been excavated, three steps added and the yard-wall built. Dai could not explain these changes, but pigs were no longer kept at Penwennol.
Last days
With increasing age and fewer people at Penwennol, livestock rearing slowly ceased, and the land was then grazed by Fron Uchaf neighbours. In the late 1950s the last occupant, David P George, moved into Pencnwc Farm with his niece Margaret Davies. He died in 1961 and the track steadily became overgrown and impassable. It had been the main access route to Penwennol for a horse-and-cart and coal-lorry. The best stone was salvaged from the buildings in the early 1990s.
Discovery
In 2006, National Park wardens and volunteers started to re-open the 500 metres of overgrown footpath between the Viewpoint and the Fron. The derelict pigsty was discovered, and renovation undertaken in 2010 by Celtic Stonework, with approval and funding from the National Park and PLANED. For reasons of durability and safety, wet-stone building with cement was used instead of traditional dry-stone. Fortunately the original 1900 corbelled-ceiling was well-preserved.
*Within the passage tomb of Newgrange in County Meath, Ireland there is a corbelled ceiling from the Neolithic period c3000BC.
With thanks to Gerallt D Nash of St Fagans National Museum of History for information on corbelling.
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