The Tudor mansion. Image Credit: Christine Tallon / SWNS/News Shopper
Parts of the Grade II-listed house were rebuilt in 1583 using dressed stone taken from nearby Caerphilly Castle, which was then largely derelict. In 2017, London couple Christine Tallon and Adrian Cole bought it for £750,000 and began a demanding restoration. Their work eventually turned the neglected property into a 7-room bed and breakfast, and in 2026 the restored mansion was placed on the market for £1.5 million. Y Fan has a recorded history dating to 1529, when Edward Lewis, sheriff of Glamorgan and a prominent landowner, acquired a house on the site. In 1583, Edward Lewis’s son Thomas secured a lease of Caerphilly Castle from the Earl of Pembroke. Sir Edward Lewis transferred his seat to St Fagans Castle in 1616, according to the Gatehouse Gazetteer. By 1991, the Gatehouse record notes that some of the lower-storey windows had been removed and only the bases of the attic windows survived. BBC reported that by 2017 it was damp and mouldy, with mushrooms growing inside. After viewing the mansion 8 times, however, they decided to take it on. They bought it for £750,000 and began the restoration, despite Cole having no previous renovation experience. The house had 132 windows that needed refurbishment, while its tall ceilings meant that even changing a light bulb could require scaffolding. Adrian Cole, 68, and Christine Tallon, 62 Image Credit: Christine Tallon / SWNS/News Shopper Work began in 2018, with the couple tackling the building themselves while also dealing with the demands of restoring a historic property. The renovation was originally expected to lead to a B&B opening in summer 2020. The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted those plans, however, and the opening was pushed back. Y Fan finally opened with 7 rooms in May 2021, according to the BBC.
The house therefore carries pieces of Caerphilly Castle within its own walls. BBC later reported that the connection can still be seen in the mansion itself, particularly around its corners, where some of the reused castle stone remains visible. BBC reported that their city careers had left them spending much of their time either working or commuting.
The historic Y Fan mansion in Caerphilly, South Wales, has a past that reaches back to the Tudor period. Centuries later, the mansion itself had fallen into serious disrepair. The Gatehouse Gazetteer records that the original building included a ground-floor hall and a storeyed porch, with a two-storey kitchen wing added during the 16th century. He then used dressed stone from the castle to rebuild parts of Van House, including a new stair block, gatehouse and walled court. The material came from the castle when it was already in a neglected state. The Gatehouse Gazetteer identifies the surviving property as one of the important Tudor mansions of Glamorgan, despite the extensive restoration it has undergone. Y Fan did not remain at the centre of the Lewis family’s life forever. After the main family line was no longer based in Glamorgan, Van House became less important. The property eventually passed into the Plymouth Estate and was leased to tenants. Over time, parts of the building were altered, extended or dismantled. The building was later thoroughly restored, helping to preserve its Tudor character. That long period of decline meant the mansion was in very poor condition when Tallon and Cole encountered it. Christine Tallon and Adrian Cole had been living and working in Bexley, south-east London. Tallon was a lawyer and Cole a finance director, and the couple wanted a different pace of life. They were not initially searching for a major restoration project. Instead, they saw Y Fan as a property that could potentially become a bed and breakfast. The scale of the task quickly became clear. The damp and mould affecting the large rooms added another layer of work. A later account of the project described the building as having required extensive attention to its walls, ceilings, heating, plumbing and electrics. The restored property retained its historic identity while taking on a new role as accommodation for visitors.
In June 2026, the BBC reported that Y Fan was being offered for £1.5 million, twice the price the couple paid for it in 2017.
Tallon told the BBC that they were getting older and that hospitality was more demanding than many people might expect. After years of work, the couple decided it was time to move on. They have not disclosed how much they spent on the restoration. The decision was linked to the demands of running a hospitality business from such a large historic house. The work carried out by Tallon and Cole gave Y Fan a new use without erasing the history embedded in its structure. You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.