AN old school building in Powys has been named as one of the top Gothic properties on the market today by online estate agent Zoopla.
The £380,000, four-bedroom house at Abbeycwmhir near Llandrindod Wells, which was built in 1857, was included on a list of the top Gothic houses on a Hallowe'en themed list from the online property company.
The two-storey schools building, with a slightly lower house on its side, was built in 1857 before being converted into a home by a London architect in the 1980s.
The original windows have small-pane iron-frame Gothic glazing bars and now have secondary glazing to improve energy conservation.
Other properties on the list include a two-bedroom flat set within the Grade II listed Clyne Castle in Swansea, and a four-bedroom farm at Lampeter.
To compile the list, Zoopla searched its own website for properties with 'gothic' features, then filtered results down to 'most popular' and capped the price at £1.5m.
The school was built in 1857 and bears the crest on the Eastern gable of Francis Aspinall Philips, whose family re-built the neighbouring St. Mary’s Church and The Hall.
They also built a lake and a water turbine supplied electricity to the hall and the original street lamp below the crest is believed to be the first in Radnorshire.
The Philips family found the noise of the schoolchildren distracting so they built a second school in 1868 about half a mile up the valley, which closed in 1969. The original school was used as a laundry for the hall, before being converted 30 years ago. It is now known as Cross Cottage.
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