Full Report for Listed Buildings
The list description is not intended to be a complete inventory of what is listed: it is principally intended to aid identification. By law, the definition of a listed building includes the entire building (i) and any structure or object that is fixed to the said building and ancillary to it and (ii) any other structure or object that forms part of the land and has done so since before 1 July 1948, and was within the curtilage of the building, and ancillary to it, on the date on which said building was first included in the list, or on 1 January 1969, whichever was later.
Summary Description
Reference Number
11396
Building Number
Grade
I
Status
Designated
Date of Designation
15/07/1974
Date of Amendment
13/01/1988
Name of Property
Cyfarthfa Castle
Address
Location
Unitary Authority
Merthyr Tydfil
Community
Park
Town
Locality
Easting
304176
Northing
207331
Street Side
Location
Situated in its own landscaped park overlooking the Taff Valley and site of the former Cyfarthfa Ironworks.
Description
Broad Class
Defence
Period
History
1824-5. Designed by Robert Lugar, architect of London, for ironmaster William Crawshay II. Cost £30,000. Sold in 1909 to Merthyr Corporation; large extensions of 1912 for school.
Exterior
Large country house Picturesque castle style. Terraced site.
Basically rectangular in shape, with almost symmetrical entrance and garden fronts meeting at a circular corner tower. Coursed bull-nosed facings with ashlar dressings. Crenellated parapets with false machicolation to towers, weathered stringcourses to rest. Stair and outlook turret to rear of corner drum-tower, dummy arrow loops, rectangular hoodmoulds (arched to drum tower which also has 3-light mullioned windows to top floor). Cross windows (later?) to entrance front and drum, sash windows with glazing-bars to ground-floor of garden front. Central towers to both fronts with splayed angles, splayed bay with finial over porch to main entrance with round turrets and arched openings; oriel over Tudor garden doorway.
Attached to left of main building are the castellated screen-wall and towered entrances to former stable courtyard and offices (now rebuilt as school accommodation). Composition of walls with dummy loops, polygonal end turret, solid left-hand gatehouse with arched entry under 3-light window and right-hand entry between round and square turrets. Tudor-style school buildings to rear.
Interior
Interior retains main suite of state rooms including entrance hall, library, drawing room and dining room (now used as museum and art gallery). Entrance hall is baronial with ribbed ceiling, heraldic cornice, Gothic shafts and panelling to doorcases and castellated chimney-piece in library, the rest of public rooms are neo-classical in style with anthemion plaster bands, egg-and-dart cornices, wide architraves with angle paterae. Ceiling roses to drawing rooms, plus fine caryatid chimney-piece and scallop-shell niches to long drawing-room; Ionic pilasters from columned screen remain in dining-room.
Reason for designation
Cadw : Full Report for Listed Buildings [ Records 1 of 1 ]
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