Ty'n Gerddi is a quintessential 'chocolate-box' cottage near Welshpool, with its thatch roof, ancient timber-framed walls and a pretty garden to fit its name. What makes it extra special is that it isn’t some manicured holiday cottage, but a working family home just like it was always intended.

‘This is a fantastic place to bring up children,’ says Myfanwy Alexander, who shares the home with her four daughters. 'You can really put down roots here…it may be a bit old fashioned, but it suits us'.

The farmhouse is a great example of how people used timber-framing to display their status, as access to good oak was often restricted to the major landowners. Most peasant homes were built using only minimal timber (often scavenged from hedgerows), whereas middling cottages may have enjoyed enough oak to build a simple box frame.

In more substantial homes such as Ty'n Gerddi the framework was deliberately over-engineered to display more oak than was structurally necessary. Oak meant money, and access to good craftsmen also denoted status. Here the timber framing is tightly spaced, and it is possible that some of the plastered panels were originally oak as well.

'There is a really tangible sense of history in this house,' says Myfanwy, 'I don’t feel as if I own the place, so much as that I'm the guardian looking after it for future generations to enjoy.'

Myfanwy's home may enjoy rural isolation today, but when it was built it would have been deeply fashionable. In fact you could argue that it was one of the first modern homes in Wales, being built in the sixteenth century as a storeyed home. This would have made it stand out from the open 'hall houses' that had been popular in medieval times, and in which many people still lived. In contrast to these huge spaces, the rooms here were designed to be private, and could be heated easily by the impressive timber chimney in the middle of the house – literally an early form of central heating.

The fact that there was a ceiling to the main reception rooms meant that the rooms would have been comfortable, and the beds upstairs could be pushed up against the timber chimney to enjoy heat all night long.

'It is such a warm home', agrees Myfanwy,' – not just easy to heat, but it feels great too. I'm delighted to have the opportunity to live here, and the girls just love it.’