87943

 

II*  

Designated  

14/08/2024  

 

The Great Hall, Aberystwyth University  

 

Ceredigion  

Llanbadarn Fawr  

Aberystwyth  

Penglais  

259788  

281745  

 

At the centre of Aberystwyth University’s Penglais campus across the raised piazza above the east side of the main axial road through the campus, facing out over the town and the sea.  

Education  

Modern  

Aberystwyth University Great Hall built 1967-1970 by Percy Thomas Partnership (Principally Ivan Dale Owen with IL Stephen James and John Vergette). The Great Hall is the main venue for University Graduation ceremonies and is used for other large events. The University College Wales was established in Aberystwyth in 1872 as a non-sectarian college with 26 students based in the former Castle Hotel (see Listed Building 10251). In its first two decades the College received no government support and relied on philanthropy. 70,000 people made small donations to the college in 1875, with much of the fundraising organised in Welsh non-conformist chapels, while larger gifts were made by a few Welshmen who had made fortunes elsewhere in the British Empire. In 1929 Joseph Davies Bryan (1864-1935), an alumnus of the college and manager of a chain of haberdashers in Egypt, purchased most of the former Penglais Estate on a hillside east of the town for the College, by now part of the federal University of Wales. This provided space for the college to expand though the sloping, coastal site long proved a challenge to architects and planners. The 1944 Education Act trebled the numbers admitted to university from 1 to 3% of the population, and in 1963 the Robbins report recommended a 170% increase in the number of undergraduates in the UK and established the principle that a university space should be available to anyone with the ability and desire to attend, leading to a dramatic expansion of universities in the UK. In 1965 Ivan Dale Owen drew up a new development plan for the Penglais Campus to further Aberystwyth’s goal of attracting 6,000 students. Ivan Dale Owen (1924-1997) was born in Merthyr Tydfil, studied architecture and planning in Cardiff and London and served in the Royal Artillery in India during WW2. In the early 1950s he worked for the Cwmbran New Town Development Corporation before winning a scholarship to study further at MIT and Harvard. In the USA he joined the Architects Collaborative led by Walter Gropius, formerly of the Bauhaus. He returned to the UK initially to work for William Holford and partners on the post-war redevelopment of London. In 1958 he joined the Cardiff office of Sir Percy Thomas and Son, later the Percy Thomas Partnership, and is credited with updating the house style of this large international firm to something much more consistently Modernist. The Great Hall was the centrepiece of Owen’s 1965 plan. It won the National Eisteddfod Gold Medal for Architecture in 1971 and a RIBA Gold Medal for Architecture in Wales in 1972. It is depicted as part of the Heavenly City in a memorial stained-glass window for Owen and his son Jason (1978-1984) in All Saint’s Church in Penarth, where Owen died in 1997. Theatr y Werin was added to the NW in 1972 by Alex Gordon and partners, with a further extension added between the two in 1999 by Smith Roberts Associates. The whole complex is collectively known as Aberystwyth Arts Centre.  

Modernist Great Hall in the Brutalist style characterised by highly expressive massing and use of materials, in reinforced concrete (both pre-cast and in situ), with aggregate panels of Cornish grey granite, bricks of matching colour and large areas of steel-framed glazing. The main volume is a large flat-roofed rectangle substantially glazed on the long west and east sides, losing a floor in height on the east side due to stepped terrace landscaping. The taller flat-topped cuboid of the hall sits within this off centre to the south, with its upper raked galleries to west and east expressed as overhanging granite cliff faces, sloping upwards and out and then vertically, which puncture through both the glass and the panelling on the long sides. West side facing the main piazza has recessed lower floor, originally to give a sheltered pedestrian route around the building, now largely glazed off in the middle to create a coffee shop. This lower ground floor plinth level is finished in vertical concrete strips resembling timber planks. Rectangular concrete slab portico braced by two columns and cantilevered over approach to the front entrance on the left side, where it aligns with the stairs up on to the piazza. Entrance to chapel on right. The upper volume is clad in square and rectangular panels forming a grid that stretches vertically in the middle and compresses at the top and bottom, framing a wide expanse of glazing with 80 vertical panes in two levels, the upper panes more than double the height of the lower panes except where they are cut short by the projecting mass of the gallery. The internal organisation of the foyer level, mezzanine and staircases is clearly visible through this glazing. East side is similar, without the plinth level, with glazing below the overhanging gallery and recessed doors directly into the Great Hall to both sides. South side has a similar projecting upper mass, the vertical top part of which has four pane ribbon windows (replaced in uPVC) either side of a six-panel ventilator (all the other projections internally and externally are blind). This overhang is framed by vertical and horizontal ribbon windows with a compressed ground floor window below and doors on either side, the left side door (on SW corner) accessed by cantilevered external staircase. North side was originally mostly blind with a much smaller projecting overhang with vertical panel windows on either side, one of which has now become an internal corridor as part of the 1999 extensions.  

Lower ground floor entry from piazza into low ceilinged space with classroom and ceramics gallery (formerly a cloak room) to either side of wide staircase leading up to spacious foyer level. This is lit by the massive front glazing and dominated by the overhanging north gallery seating of the Great Hall, clad in the same aggregate panels as the exterior though the sloping underside has been covered over with a fabric screen. Below this are two entrances into the floor level of the Great Hall separated by an abstract cast aluminium sculptural artwork in three panels by David Tinker (1924-2000), the head of Aberystwyth Art School from 1962 to 1986, the work commissioned by Dale Owen. Staircase with middle landing directly above the first leads from foyer to mezzanine level wrapped against the north side of the building, connected to staircases up to east and west side gallery seating. The Great Hall auditorium is a flat square with panelled sides, with raked upper gallery seating on three sides. Movable panels below the east gallery with the area beyond heavily glazed (the only point where natural light can reach the Hall interior). Both the square main floor space and the deep concrete square ceiling grid of the Great Hall are references to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple in Illinois of 1908, which like this drew inspiration from the architecture of Welsh nonconformist chapels with its tiered gallery seating. The chapel faith space is internally isolated on lower ground floor entered from the piazza at the end closer to the Bell Tower, interior mainly finished in brick. Above this are plant and kitchen rooms, ‘backstage’ of the Great Hall.  

Included at grade II* for its special architectural interest as a major work by Dale Owen, a key figure in the leading Welsh architectural practice of the post-war period. A monumental centrepiece for Owen’s plan to bring unity to the Penglais Campus, it successfully adapts the approach to Modernism he learnt from Gropius and American architecture and applies it to a significant Welsh landscape, with a Welsh historical reference in its chapel-like projecting galleries. Special historic interest as part of the ambitious post-war expansion of the University of Wales. Group value with other Listed structures on the Penglais campus. Although complimentary in its materials the 1972 Theatr y Werin block to the northeast is not of special architectural or historic interest as it is a lesser work by Alex Gordon and partners that has been heavily altered. This structure has been afforded Interim Protection under the Planning (Listed Building and Conservation Areas) Act 1990. It is an offence to damage this structure and you may be prosecuted. To find out more about Interim Protection, please visit the statutory notices page on the Cadw website. For further information about this structure, or to report any damage please contact Cadw.