Former country mansion that ticks all of the boxes
IF you’re looking for a semi-detached house for sale in Wales but are hoping to uncover one which is a genuine one-off, your search might be a challenge.
And if you want it to be located in a semi-rural area with easy access to an expanse of grounds and an adjacent ancient woodland, rather than a row of similar semis, good luck with that.
And if your final ‘must-have’ is a semi-detached home that has history embedded into its very core, that cuts the list of properties available for you to buy down to a very short one.
But we may have found the perfect place for you. For there’s a semidetached house currently for sale in Wales that ticks all of the boxes above - it’s the old billiards room of a once very grand property.
The former country mansion can boast a single-storey wing dedicated to billiards and general partying, and this pursuit of entertaining was so important to the former owner of Plas Ystrad that it was lavished with very fine design indeed.
Slate roof, incredible and huge red brick chimneys, multiple bespoke designed windows with arches as the running theme, and an intriguing shape which turns out to be cruciform.
This unique building that is attached to the side of the mansion is topped off with a beautiful roof lantern window. What other semidetached house can boast this mix of features and their attached neighbour a mansion?
The front door at the rear of the wing opens into a small vestibule with a shower room to one side, but step forward and into the main event and look up.
Surely the teak, barrel-vaulted ceiling that crowns this open-plan living space is one of the best ceilings to be found in a two-bed home currently for sale in Wales?
The room was once lined with wood panelling, had a robust brick fireplace where the two double bedrooms can now be found, in one of the wings that shoots out from the cross design of this social space.
Jonathan Firth, whose company Firth & Son specialises in renovating, restoring and updating historic buildings, has worked on Plas Ystrad for many years in phases.
He remembers that when he and his father first picked up the keys the house was in a terrible state, on the verge of collapse and much of it could not be saved, only sympathetically recreated.
It had been vandalised and sadly the wood wall panelling and fireplace in the billiards room were a distant memory, confined to fading old photographs of the interior design of the house.
But it was bought to be saved, restored and rebuilt, so the long process began.
The mansion and estate is on the outskirts of Carmarthen in Johnstown, and is totally interwoven with the locality, this version built for local MP John Jones in the 19th century.
Jonathan says records show that there has been a dwelling house on the present site since 1580, at which time it was owned by a William Davies, a local J.P. and High Sheriff.
He says: “The Jones family owned the estate in the late 1700s and it is their second son John Jones who gave his name to the local village of ‘John’s town’.”
This current surviving version of Plas Ystrad is believed to date back to 1810 when it was refurbished for John Jones.
But, unlike so many other features, thankfully the amazing ceiling in the billiards room survived the property’s period of emptiness and vandalism.
The fact that the ceiling was still in place at all and in such a good state is a testament to the original construction of the building and skill of the craftspeople working on it.
Jonathan says all his company had to do to revive this stunning feature was to dust it, wash it down, do a few minor repairs and then when it was dry, coat it with teak oil.
Jonathan says: “It’s now like new, even though it’s about 210 years old. When you look up, it takes your breath away, you don’t know what’s coming, it’s staggeringly gorgeous.”
This space is open-plan to the kitchen area within the opposite ‘cross’ wing to the bedrooms, making this central area a social hub again, as it once was in its first incarnation as a billiards room for John Jones.
Of course the table is long gone, but there is certainly space to add your own billiards table if you desire, and there is certainly enough light to see exactly how many shots you are actually missing.
The room was designed for this specific game, hence the doubleheight ceiling and the abundance of proportionately large windows, and the roof lantern, ensuring the space is constantly flooded with natural light, so you can’t hide your dodgy cue skills within the darkness.
The Billiard Room at Plas Ystrad is for sale for offers in the region of £250,000 with John Francis, Carmarthen, call 01267 340069 to find out more.