Ffair Rhos Area Guide

Ffair Rhos lays within Strata Florida Abbey’s Mefenydd Grange, and was granted a fair by the Abbey. Post-Dissolution, Ffair Rhos’ fairs were the greatest in Ceredigion.

This area consists of an open upland valley or hollow between 240m to 400m centred on the hamlet of Ffair Rhos. Ffair Rhos is a small linear settlement on either side of a minor road surrounded by numerous dispersed farmsteads, cottages and smallholdings.

Architecture

Local stone is the traditional building material with slate (north Wales slate) used for roofs. Walls are usually cement rendered on houses and bare on traditional farm buildings.

Older houses that almost all entirely date to the mid-to-late 19th Century, are relatively small, and of two storeys or one-and-a-half storeys (although at least one single storey cottage is present).

They are built in the typical Georgian vernacular style, with gable end chimneys, a central front door, and two windows either side of the door and one above, but with stronger vernacular traits such as low eaves and small windows on most houses rather than Georgian elements.

Many of these houses have been recently modernised and extended. A short terrace of worker houses lies in Ffair Rhos, but most houses have (or had) an agricultural function, with stone-built outbuildings, generally confined to one or two small ranges, sometimes attached and in-line to the house.

Several farms are not now working and outbuildings are not used or have been converted. Working farms have small ranges of modern steel and concrete agricultural buildings. There are a few modern houses/bungalows close to Ffair Rhos. Two small, disused chapels are present.

Landscape

Land-use is rough pasture, tending towards un-grazed moor. Peaty deposits are common. Some improved pasture is present on lower ground towards the east end of the area. There are no significant stands of trees.

The whole area has been parcelled up into an irregular field system. The boundaries to this system comprise earth banks or earth and stone banks. Hedges are not generally present except on the lower ground close to Ffair Rhos hamlet, but even here they are derelict and no longer stock-proof.

Wire fences now top most of the older bank boundaries, and some new wire boundaries have been created. Many of the older enclosures on the higher slopes no longer function and have been merged into larger units. Williams (1990, 59) records a Medieval perimeter boundary to Ffair Rhos, but this has not been seen by the present author.

Apart from a minor metal a redundant chapel and mine; the recorded archaeology comprises several deserted cottages.

The boundaries of this landscape area are not particularly well defined. To the north, east and west it fades into unenclosed moorland or land that has now mostly reverted to moor. To the west lies land consisting of large enclosures of improved and unimproved ground.