NEARLY £700,000 is needed in funding to rescue a Monmouthshire manor house.

The Landmark Trust, which took over Llwyn Celyn, a Grade I listed medieval hall house at Crucorney Fawr, near Abergavenny, in 2012 has launched an urgent appeal to raise the remaining £690,000 to restore the building.

The 15th manor, which is less than six miles away from Llanthony Priory, is the most significant inhabited building in Wales.

It has scarcely changed since the 17th century and was continuously inhabited since the 1480’s until earlier this year.

The house retains its original floor plan and much of its medieval joinery and decorative features, including a carved passage screen and double-headed ogee door heads with carved spandrels.

It is in a major state of disrepair and has been supported by scaffolding for the last decade and is recognised as one of the most remarkable of all surviving late-medieval Welsh houses.

The cost of the restoration work is £4.2million. The Landmark Trust has already raised £1million in private donations as well as £2.5million from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

HRH The Prince of Wales, who is a patron of the Landmark Trust, visited the farmstead in July and had the opportunity to speak with members of the Powell family, who up until earlier this year lived at the property.

Once restored, the Trust will use the building for self-catering holidays for up to eight people and hope to open it in 2016. The Old Barn and Threshing Barn will be adapted as a space for community use and as an interpretation room where the history of the site and the Black Mountains will be showcased for walkers and cyclist to visit.

Caroline Stanford, the Landmark Trust’s Historian and head of engagement, said: “We’re thrilled by the early support we’ve had for the project. Llwyn Celyn is a window into a 15th century world.”

“It’s an incredibly rare survival, a really important house, but unless we act fast-now- it’s going to be lost forever.”