87944

 

II  

Designated  

14/08/2024  

 

The Bell Tower  

 

Ceredigion  

Llanbadarn Fawr  

Aberystwyth  

Penglais  

259766  

281703  

 

At the centre of Aberystwyth University’s Penglais campus, on the raised piazza above the east side of the main axial road through the campus, between the Great Hall and the Student’s Union.  

Education  

Modern  

Very tall sculptural boiler flue completed 1970, designed by Ivan Dale Owen. 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 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. In 1935 Percy Thomas produced a grand formal scheme of continuous ranges of which only three buildings were completed before the plan was replaced in 1957 by a plan by William Holford for small groups of four to six storey blocks scattered around the hillside. In 1965 Ivan Dale Owen drew up a new development plan for the Penglais Campus to further the University’s goal of attracting 6,000 students. The new scheme took up elements from both earlier plans and refocussed the campus around a large central raised platform or piazza, with three sides formed by the Great Hall, main library and Student’s Union and the fourth side left open giving a panoramic view over the town and the sea beyond. Landscaping of the site was an integral part of its development and landscape architects John Ingleby and Brenda Colvin were commissioned to work with the college’s botany department to frame the buildings and better integrate the campus (See Registered Park & Garden PGW(Dy)47(CER) ). Dale Owen labelled the tall sculptural boiler-flue feature on the piazza as a “campanile” on plans rather than merely a chimney, and it was intended to provide a visible reference point across the whole of Penglais Campus to help staff and students navigate the site. 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 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 Bell Tower, alongside the Great Hall and concourse won 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. The Bell Tower was repaired in 2009.  

Slimline concrete chimney shaft rising from the piazza concourse, taller than the Great Hall and the Hugh Owen Library nearby so that it is visible across much of the Penglais Campus. Inner cuboid shaft is open to the west and clad in dark aggregate panels, with top angled cut off sloping east to west. This is sheathed on three sides by lighter gravel aggregate panels matching those of the surrounding buildings, with open seams at the NE and SE corners. This sheathing ends a few metres short of the top and on north and south sides in an opposed angled cut off sloping from west down to east. Narrow vertical openings in these two sides linked by single pale panel above with iron bell suspended from it. Wooden benches at the base of the chimney are a later introduction.  

 

Listed for special architectural interest as a recognisable icon of the Penglais campus, demonstrating Dale Owen’s Bauhaus influences via Walter Gropius and ambition for the piazza concourse as the focal point of the Penglais campus. 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, in particular the Arts Centre Great Hall and Hugh Owen Library. Benches not of interest. 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.