LLANELLY House has had a fair few different uses during its time.
The town centre house is generally listed as being built in 1714, but project director Craig Hatto said excavation work revealed a building had been on the site since the 12th Century, when it was a monastery joined on to the St Elli Church.
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Historians believed this was destroyed during the dissolution of the monasteries during Henry VIII’s reign.
It was then rebuilt to become the home of the Cadwgan Fychan family in Tudor times, and in 1714 was reconstructed after the Stepney family took it over in the 1690s.
Craig said the timing of the house’s extension in 1714 meant it would have been designed during Queen Anne’s reign — making it very rare.
In 1803, the traveller Malkin noted the old mansion was in a state of dilapidation “inhabited principally by fishermen and colliers”, and a year later it was divided up into three separate dwellings.
In 1811, William Chambers — an illegitimate son of Sir John Stepney the eighth Baronet— moved into the house with his family, employing a house full of servants.
Following his death in 1855, part of the house was turned into a Drapers called Francis Laying.
In 1863 it became a bakery before being taken over by the Margraves brothers who were wine merchants.
Then in 1873 it became a telegraph and post office, operated by John Chalinder.
Between the 1870s and the turn of the century, a variety of shops took up home in the building, including a shoemaker, a chemists, a tailor, the West of England bank, a dressmaker, a saddler and a sweet shop.
In 1923 Margraves Wine and Spirit Merchants still existed in the building, as well as Andrews’ confectioners, but these were replaced later by Pewsey’s tobacconists and Hill Davies’s gentleman’s outfitters, a health foods shop, a pine furniture shop and a cafe upstairs.