page_title: Architecture of Wales
section_title: Houses associated with Owain Glyndŵr and Edward I
hierarchical_section_title: Architecture of Wales / Earliest architecture / Houses associated with Owain Glyndŵr and Edward I
caption_attribution_description: English: Parliament House, Machynlleth. Engraving by Edward Pugh, 1813.
context_page_description: Architecture of Wales is an overview of architecture in Wales from the Medieval period to the present day, excluding castles and fortifications, ecclesiastical architecture and industrial architecture. It covers the history of domestic, commercial, and administrative architecture.
context_section_description: There are a number of houses in north Wales that have been traditionally associated with Owain Glyndŵr, and there is also the Parliament House of Edward I at Ruthin. They may not be certainly associated with these historic figures, but they are important as evidence for early stone buildings in Wales. Best known is Owain Glyndŵr's Parliament house in Machynlleth. This building has been substantially altered in more recent times, but fortunately Edward Pugh published a fine coloured lithograph of the building in 1816. Recent dendrochronological dating of the felling of a roof timber to 1470, does not rule out an association of the building's stone structure with Owain. The original building is a hall house with a four-unit plan: storeyed outer room of two bays, open passage (two bays between partition trusses), open hall (three bays with dais-end partition), and a storeyed inner-room of two bays. The carpentry is refined: purlins and ridge are tenoned into the trusses. The principal rafters of each truss are unusually shaped ('extruded') to receive the tenoned collar. In the hall the purlins are moulded with two tiers of wind braces (replaced), and the trusses have shaped feet. The upper-end truss is set forward from the dais partition to form a shallow canopy.
  At Carrog near Corwen parts of Owain's Prison stood, possibly into the 20th century. Thomas Pennant wrote in about 1776 that "The prison where Owen confined his captives was not far from his house, in the parish of Llansantfraid Glyndwrdwy and the place is to this day called 'Carchardy Owen Glyndwrdwy'. Some remains are still to be seen near the church, which form part of a habitable house. It consists of a room 13 feet square and ten and a half high. The sides consist of three horizontal beams, with upright planks, not four inches asunder, mortised into them. In these are groves in the bottom, as if there had been cross bars, or grates. The roof is exceedingly strong, composed of strong planks almost contiguous. It seems as if there had been two stories; but the upper part at present is evidently modern". In 1794 John Ingleby was employed to make a watercolour record of the building, which stood just to the SE of the church and overlooked the River Dee. The building was thatched and has some timber close studding and also a Gothic arched window and Gothic arched doors. There seems to be evidence for an outer stair leading to a first floor hall, which suggests that parts of the building could well have been contemporary with Owain Glyndŵr. The site of the building was on the modern Glyndŵr Terrace.
   
  There was another Parliament House of Glyndŵr in the centre of Dolgellau. It was moved in 1885 to Newtown, Powys and re-erected in a much altered form. It may have been first referred to as the Parliament House in 1555. 
  This is building is now known as Plas Cwrt yn Dre. It was an aisled hall house, so is likely to have been a building of considerable importance, but is unlikely to date back to the time of Owain. Much restored by A B Phipson for Sir Pryce Pryce-Jones as a two-storey three bay house. Largely timber framed with stone end walls with interlocking herring-bone decorative framing to a jettied first floor, which is supported by vine scroll brackets. There is an external stone staircase to a plank door at extreme left and square panelled timber framing to ground floor. The right stone bay incorporates re-used medieval masonry and a two light window with a central stone mullion. Arcade patterns in tile inset to stack may reproduce the arcade designs on the chimney stack shown in a lithograph of 1810 by Cornelius Varley.
  Another building that might be of considerable antiquity is the Parliament House of Edward III in Rhuddlan where it was thought that the Statute of Rhuddlan was promulgated. Thomas Pennant remarks in 1778, "A piece of antient building called the Parlement is still to be seen in Rhuddlan: probably where the king sat in council." Pennant was to get John Ingleby to provide a watercolour of the building. Today the building still partially stands in 
caption: Parliament House, Machynlleth in 1816
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