The Arcade

Cadw's description

Location

Situated some 50m from The Square.

Exterior

Nos 9 to 15 (odd): 1899 block of shops and offices with arcade running through to rear, by Henry Herbert of Ammanford. Red brick with yellow and red terracotta dressings, slate roof, coped gables and three red brick stacks. Three storeys and attic, 5-window range. Two-storey entrance arch to arcade in second bay, elsewhere ground floor shopfronts, first and second floor paired camber-headed windows with unusual glazing tracery in upper sash and moulded yellow brick surrounds. Attic red terracotta balustrade and 5 coped double-curved dormers with arched yellow brick window-surrounds and ball finials. Bays on upper floors are divided by panelled piers and have friezes over ground (largely lost) and first floor bays, both pier panels and friezes in yellow terracotta. First and second floor sill-courses broken forward over the piers, second floor eaves courses in moulded red terracotta. Left end has sunk panels in walling rather than raised piers. Ground floor: Nos 9-11 (Barclays Bank) is wholly altered;
No 13 has original moulded terracotta frieze and double-fronted shopfront; No 15 retains a brick shop window surround and possibly the frieze (hidden by C20 fascia). The Arcade entry is in red terracotta with decorated spandrels, big keystone, frieze and flanking triangular-section corbelled shafts with finials, the whole wider than bays elsewhere, eliminating the first floor piers. Within arch, yellow brick side walls. Rear is rubble stone and yellow brick.

The Arcade: Arcade itself is architecturally modest, low with curved lattice trusses to gabled transparent roof, shops each side with very low boarded upper floors with casement pair windows. Five shops each side originally, now 4 to left , 3 to right, and one each side within arch now subsumed int Nos 13 and 15 College St. Plate glass shop windows with recessed doors, bracketted fascias and yellow brick piers between. Shops are stepped up slope. Stucco end walls with hipped slate roofs.

This building and Nos 1-7 adjoining were nearly identical but Nos 1-7 have lost all the original windows, chimneys and dormers. Both blocks were built for Evan Evans, Chemist, who also added the Palace Theatre at the end of the Arcade in 1914 (demolished).

Reason for designation

Included as a prominent urban building with good detailing of its period