page_title: Llangwm, Monmouthshire
section_title: Allt-y-Bela
hierarchical_section_title: Llangwm, Monmouthshire / History and amenities / Allt-y-Bela
caption_attribution_description: English: Allt-y-bela farmhouse. This hidden away mediaeval farmhouse has recently been renovated. It is unusual because of the tower added at the side by a former owner.
context_page_description: Llangwm is a small rural village and community in Monmouthshire, south east Wales. It is located 3 miles east of Usk, on the B4235 Chepstow to Usk road. The main village is at Llangwm Uchaf, with a smaller and more dispersed settlement about 1 mile to the north-east at Llangwm Isaf.The other settlement in the community is Llansoy.
context_section_description: Allt-y-Bela is a mid-15th century house in Llangwm Uchaf. It is a Grade II* listed building.
  Allt-y-Bela was built as a hall house in the mid-15th century, originally as a traditional, single-storey, cruck-frame building with wooden mullions and leaded lights. About a century later a first floor was added with dormer windows and chimneys. In 1599 the wealthy Midlands wool merchant Roger Edwards, the founder of Usk Grammar School, added a three-storey Renaissance tower.
  Visiting in the late 1940s, when the owner was farmer Mr Moseley, the local writer and historian Fred Hando noted the builder's inscription mark – 1599, E.R. R.E – and was also shown the central spiral staircase, built around a massive single tree-trunk newel post. Curiously the stair treads showed holes through which bell-ropes would once have passed and there was a tiny bellcote, with a bellframe, at the very top of the tower. The bell had reputedly been moved to the nearby church of St David's Church, Llangeview. The Edwards family was part of an extreme religious sect and it has been suggested that the bell would have been used to call members to services.
  By 1980 one side of the tower had fallen and by 2000 the house was described as "now miserably derelict". After years of neglect the property was the subject of a compulsory purchase order, with no compensation, by Monmouthshire County Council and in 2001 the council handed it to the preservation body the Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust. The Trust secured a £300,000 grant from Cadw, borrowed the same amount from the Architectural Heritage Fund, and also planned to spend £400,000 of its own funds on the restoration.
  The name Allt-y-Bela derives from the Welsh, meaning "wooded heights or cliff of the wolf." Today the property is run as a bed and breakfast guest house.
caption: Allt-y-Bela in 2005, the tower
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