Bach y Graig

This February we visited Bach y Graig for the first time. This Prodigy House of 1567 was built for Sir Richard Clough, a Mercer, in a very similar style to Sir Rowland Hill's Soulton Hall. Both great houses were built as cubes with pyramid roofs and outbuildings, and have been discussed extensively in Byrga Geniht lectures that you can see on our YouTube channel. Whereas at Soulton the manorial buildings around the surviving corps de logis were replaced by a model farm during the Agricultural Revolution, at this sister house it was the other way round. The main house at Bach y Graig no longer stands, but the gatehouse range and farm buildings are a real treat.

In particular, the play of light through the cross windows in the barns and stables is stunning, and connects with traditions of light studied by Byrga Geniht going back right through the Roman period to prehistory. Meanwhile, the surviving gate arch shows knowledge of the cube-plus-pyramids construction of the rhombic dodecahedron, adding yet more corroboration to our discovery of this lost philosophical culture.

Bach y Graig is full of important history for Wales: from Mam Cymru (the Mother of Wales) who was Clough's second wife (and he her second husband), to Shakespearean connections, and the political project behind the publication of the Bible in Welsh, published in 1567 (and which the house may itself commemorate). Our deep thanks to to Gareth for welcoming us; the visit was truly an honour and a moment of cultural euphoria.