Bwthyn Marda

Cadw's description

Location

One of a pair of houses set back from the road on the W side of the Royal Madoc Arms Hotel.

History

Tremadog was a town created by William Madocks (1773-1828) in the first decade of the C19 on reclaimed land known as Traeth Mawr, the estuary of Afon Glaslyn. It was originally intended to be a post town on a direct road between London and Dublin, via Porthdinllaen on the Lleyn peninsula, a project that in due course lost out to the Holyhead Road. Tremadog was laid out around a market square, with market hall, coaching inn, houses and shops, with a church and chapel just outside the centre. Building of this small planned development, as well as a separate woollen manufactory, began c1805 and was largely completed by the time Richard Colt Hoare described it in 1810.

Nos 1-2 Dublin Street were originally part of the stable block of the Royal Madoc Arms Hotel, completed by 1808. The stable block is shown on the 1842 Tithe map. Conversion of the E end of the block to form 2 dwellings was probably an early C20 alteration. The remainder of the stable block was mostly taken down when it was enclosed within a large garage, and the remaining part was badly damaged by fire in the late C20.

Exterior

Belongs to a group of 1-2 Dublin Street, Tremadog.

A reflected but unequal pair of 2-storey 2-window houses of blocks of quarried stone laid in regular courses, slate roof and roughcast end stacks. No 1 on the R-hand side is wider. Openings have flat stone arches. Doorways to the inner sides have half-lit doors with vertical panels and small-pane glazing. Outer windows are 16-pane hornless sashes in the lower storey. In the upper storey are 12-pane hornless sash windows, of which the outer are under individual gables, and the narrower inner windows, which are not aligned with the doorways beneath, are under a single gable.

To the L is a projecting gabled bay, originally forming the centre of the composition, with round pitching eye to the loft. It is otherwise obscured by the addition of a 5-bay 1-storey rendered garage front and only the original L gable end of the stables has otherwise survived.

Against the R gable end is a modern flat canopy attached to the Royal Madoc Arms Hotel. The rear is mainly rendered and painted white, and has a 2-storey wing. The side walls of the wing have a boarded door and small-pane sash window in the upper storey, and the rear of the main range has small-pane sashes in each storey. (Further R is the projecting rear wing of the former stables, of rubble stone but with the roof mostly burnt out.)

Interior

Not inspected.

Reason for designation

Listed as part of the original stable block and coach house of the Royal Madoc Arms Hotel, later sensitively converted to 2 dwellings, notable for its distinctive use of local stone, and as an integral component of the planned town of Tremadog.