The Swiss Cottage, Rockfield,

Monmouthshire Monmouthshire ( cy, Sir Fynwy) is a county in the south-east of Wales. The name derives from the historic county of the same name; the modern county covers the eastern three-fifths of the historic county. The largest town is Abergavenny, with ...

is a gatehouse to

The Hendre The Hendre, ( cy, Yr Hendre a farmer's winter residence; literally meaning old home) in Rockfield, is the only full-scale Victorian country house in the county of Monmouthshire, Wales. The ancestral estate of the Rolls family, it was the child ...

estate and was designed by Sir Aston Webb in 1905. It is a Grade II* listed building.

History and description

The Hendre was the country home of the

Rolls family The Rolls family were substantial landowners and benefactors in and around Monmouth in south-east Wales. The ascent of the family to the aristocracy was through marriage. A prominent member of the family was Charles Stewart Rolls, who co-founded t ...

since the 18th century and, as the fortunes of the family rose, was subject to three major expansions in the 19th and 20th centuries, to the designs of

George Vaughan Maddox George Vaughan Maddox (1802–27 February 1864) was a nineteenth-century British architect and builder, whose work was undertaken principally in the town of Monmouth, Wales, and in the wider county. Working mainly in a Neo-Classical style, hi ...

, then Thomas Henry Wyatt, and finally Aston Webb. Webb constructed the Cedar Library at the main mansion in the very late 19th century and in 1905 designed the Swiss Cottage. It formed a terminal point on the “3-mile Drive” constructed by

Lord Llangattock Baron Llangattock, "of the Hendre in the County of Monmouth", was a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1892 for John Rolls, of The Hendre in the parish of Llangattock-Vibon-Avel, about 4 miles north-west of Monmouth, Me ...

, and designed by Henry Ernest Milner. The cottage is single-storeyed, with a dormer above, and is constructed of old red sandstone. The roof is

hipped In vertebrate anatomy, hip (or "coxa"Latin ''coxa'' was used by Celsus in the sense "hip", but by Pliny the Elder in the sense "hip bone" (Diab, p 77) in medical terminology) refers to either an anatomical region or a joint. The hip region ...

and pierced at either end with large

chimneystacks A chimney is an architectural ventilation structure made of masonry, clay or metal that isolates hot toxic exhaust gases or smoke produced by a boiler, stove, furnace, incinerator, or fireplace from human living areas. Chimneys are ...

. The interior contains an inglenook fireplace.

Cadw (, a Welsh verbal noun meaning "keeping/preserving") is the historic environment service of the Welsh Government and part of the Tourism and Culture group. works to protect the historic buildings and structures, the landscapes and heritage s ...

notes influences from Lutyens and Voysey, while the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales considers it "an inspired and unusually distinctive symmetrical Arts-and-Crafts design". The architectural historian John Newman described Swiss Cottage as "a sweet little thing but not particularly Swiss".

Notes

References

* * {{cite book , last=Whittle, first=Elisabeth , title=The Hendre , url= https://coflein.gov.uk/media/18/82/cpg269.pdf , year=1990 , publisher=Cadw , location=Cardiff Buildings and structures in Monmouthshire Grade II* listed buildings in Monmouthshire