Nantclwyd y Dre is one of the oldest timber-framed houses in Wales. The grade 1 listed home is situated in Ruthin, Wales. Just a stones throw away from Ruthin Gaol. Between 1435 and 1436 construction began on the home.
Throught the history of this glorious home many owners came and went. Following Jacobean era enlargement, the major late Stuart period addition includes the distinctive pillared porch. The name Nantclwyd y Dre was probably bestowed on the property in the 1720s. During the Georgian era, the local Wynne family restored the property to habitable status. It was then converted into a girls school in the Victorian era, and from 1834 it also became the local lodge for visiting judges.
In 1925, existing tenant and retired civil engineer Clinton Holme bought the house, and in 1928 he removed the exterior render to expose the timber frames. He sold the property to Samuel Dyer Gough who continued the restoration, and made it into the local hub for the Arts and Crafts movement.
In 1984 Dyer Gough's widow sold the house and its gardens to Clwyd County Council. From the mid-2000s, successor administration Denbighshire County Council started work on preserving the property. Converted into a living history museum, it displays demonstrate the changing fashions and the lives of the house's residents under the theme of the "Seven ages of Nantclwyd y Dre":
- 1942 hall
- 1916 rector’s study
- 1891 schoolroom
- Georgian panelled bedroom suite with Chinese-wallpaper
- 1690 "cabinet" of Stuart owner Eubule Thelwall (c. 1622 - 1695), with its "Kidderminster stuff" hangings and plaster ceiling
- Jacobean bedchamber with hung bed, painted cloths, and "stool of ease" in its closet
- 15th century "business room", its 1435 structure virtually unchanged, showing the preserved documentation of a mediaeval resident' pilgrimage to Rome, founded during restoration within the buildings infrastructure
Opened to the public on 23 June 2007, visitors can also observe a colony of Lesser horseshoe bats in the attic rooms via a "bat cam".
