A brief history of Tyn Cellar Farm

Tyn Cellar Farm is Grade 2 listed. Records show that the farm dates back to the 1300’s when it was built as part of Margam Abbey. We have the history of all the tenants who have lived and worked the farm after 1536.This dates back to the reformation by Henry 8th and the dissolution of the Abbey.

The word Tyn Cellar means “The house of the Cellar man”. He would have been second in command at the Abbey and his job was to buy and sell all the goods and labour that the Abbey needed. It is thought that Tyn Cellar was used to store wool leaving the Abbey (a very valuable commodity in the 13th and 14th century) to be shipped to Somerset for processing. In the early 1300s the sand blew in from the Severn estuary and encroached on the land and over the next 50 years buried a lot of the farmland and eventually the Norman Kenfig Castle and it was abandoned.

It 1830 the farm was given a major make over by the then owners of Margam estates and all the dressed stonework and tiled roof are original from that period. This is the only farm that the estate did due to the cost.

We have been very careful and diligent with the refurbishment of the B&B and Cottages to keep as much of the original character as possible. Hence all the walls are lime plastered by hand, lime mortar used to rebuild doorways and stonework, and all timber used where possible was recycled from one building to the next or sourced locally second hand.

The pine floors in the B&B came from the Victorian engine sheds at Wern Tarw Colliery in Pencoed. The oak flooring in most of the cottages from a school in St Mellons, Cardiff and it is stamped Japan 1948 .The maple flooring came from Archbishop Mcgrath School in Ynysadwre during a rebuild.

 

 

 

 

Tyn Cellar Farm

We bought Tyn Cellar Farmhouse in 2003. We have worked hard over the years firstly to get the B&B up and running from an empty shell in 2006 and then developing the derelict barns into self catering holiday cottages when they were purchased in 2015. It took 3 years to get planning permission then 10 months to convert the Barn B&B which has been up and running since 2010

It took 18 months to get planning permission and after 18 months of hard work the first Holiday cottages were opened in 2018. We are very proud that they are all 4-star rated with the Welsh Tourist board.

 We use a Biomass boiler that provides all our hot water and heating for the whole site. This is considered carbon neutral as it burns wood pellets.

We only use natural gas for cooking as the cottages have a very limited electricity supply to the site. We were hoping to put an EV charging point in the car park but the power supply will not take this currently.

We have a variety of livestock on the farm 3 types of chickens, Bantams, Warrens for eggs and Brahmas. We also have geese and ducks.

The sheep you see in the field are our rare breed Soay sheep, Callum, our ram is the one with the big horns. These are all registered with the rare breed society and are part of the 1800 breeding ewes left in Britain. They are very good natured and have few problems associated with the breed.

We also have 8 colonies of honey bees which produce our Tyn Cellar Farm honey which we sell at the farm.

We are fortunate to have a good size vegetable plot, a poly tunnel and 2 green houses where we can grow most of our fruit and vegetables to carry us through the year.

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