Cefn Bryntalch, The one-time home of Philip Heseltine / Peter Warlock.
Cefn Bryntalch
The family home in Wales
Cefn Bryntalch is set in spacious grounds not far from Abermule in Montgomeryshire, in the middle of the Severn valley. Talch in Welsh means fragment, bryn means hill, and cefn means ridge, the house is therefore on the ‘ridge of part of a hill‘.
Built by G. F. Bodley and Philip Webb in 1869, it is regarded as marking the beginning of the Georgian revival of the 1870s. It is a large and imposing building with an exterior of cleanly detailed red brick and three big gables on the south – east front.
The main image to the left shows the side face of the house, including the front door and bell tower.
The interior is largely in the neo-Georgian style – one of the most impressive features being the imposing, broad staircase leading towards a Venetian window and then dividing into two flights which double back to a gallery
Philip once wrote helpfully to a friend that it was pronounced “Keffen Brüntach, the ch being aspirate“. [Heseltine to Cecil Gray, 14 June 1922.]
Photograph and description courtesy of Rhian Davies to whom I offer my grateful thanks.
My thanks also for the direct quotations from Barry Smith’s book Peter Warlock – The Life of Philip Heseltine. (1994) Oxford University Press [ISBN 0-19-816606-0]
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