Former Assembly Rooms of Music & Drama

Cadw's description

Location

At the W end of the street with rear elevation overlooking Laura Place and the Parish Church.

History

Opened July 1820; enlarged ca 1829/30. By G S Repton at a cost of £2,000. Built at the instigation of W E Powell of Nanteos to serve as a meeting place for the fashionable and wealthy people who began visiting Aberystwyth in the early C19. Later served as a temporary home for the National Library of Wales and was in 1923 internally remodelled by Messrs Barrett and McGregor Wood to be used as the College Union (later the Student's Union). Now part of the University Music Department.

Exterior

Rectangular double pile plan. Symmetrical 2-storey and basement, 3-window lightly scribed stucco front (S side) with band course and plinth, twin hipped slate roofs, wide bracket eaves and rubble chimney stack. Small pane sash windows, to ground floor with arched heads and set in stepped recesses flanking central plain porch (added 1829/30) with arched entrance; double panelled doors below traceried fanlight. Railings either side of the porch, to the right with steps down to the basement. Low walls continue at either end, with corner piers and blocked doorways, screening small enclosed courtyards (1829/30). Behind are 2-storey. Similar ranges set in the slope with asymmetrically spaced sash windows, terminating in advanced gable ends with pediment treatment on the rear elevation.

2-storey, 5-bay rear (N) stucco front with plinth and channelled ground floor below band course. Wide bracket eaves, higher over central bays with glazed arched heads to tall tripartite small pane sash windows lighting the Parry Hall. Square headed similar windows to outer bays and to stepped down ground floor entered by central half glazed doors.

Interior

Originally the building comprised "Assembly and Promenade Room", a card room, billiards room and "Refreshment Room", the first of which now forms the Joseph Parry Hall with 'minstrels gallery' and egg and dart cornice. Alterations to University use.

Reason for designation

Group value with listed items in Laura Place, Great Darkgate Street and King Street.