87945

 

II  

Designated  

14/08/2024  

 

The Hugh Owen Building  

 

Ceredigion  

Aberystwyth  

Aberystwyth  

Penglais  

259748  

281799  

 

On the east side of the main axial road through Aberystwyth University’s Penglais Campus, in a long continuous range beginning shortly after the turn off from Penglais Road and continuing south to the central raised piazza, which the Hugh Owen Library shares with the Great Hall and Student’s Union.  

Education  

Modern  

University library and humanities teaching complex built 1973-1976 by Percy Thomas Partnership (Partner in charge was John Vergette, although much of the building’s appearance was already determined by Ivan Dale Owen’s masterplan for the campus). Three main blocks (with projecting east wing) in a terraced range, with library functions concentrated in the largest southernmost block and the remainder used as lecture and seminar rooms and academic offices (academic departments hosted in 2024 were Modern Languages, English and Creative Writing and Law & Criminology). 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. Sir Hugh Owen (1804-1881) was an Anglesey-born Calvinistic Methodist who became a senior clerk for the London-based Poor Law Board. Having earlier campaigned to establish more non-denominational British Schools in Wales as well as teacher training colleges in Bangor and Swansea, Owen retired in the early 1870s and spent most of the remainder of his life travelling widely in Wales to raise funds for the fledgling Aberystwyth College. 70,000 people made small donations to the college in 1875, with much of the fundraising carried out in Welsh non-conformist chapels, while larger gifts were made by a few Welsh men 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. 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. 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 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. Landscaping the site involved considerable earth moving and planting was used to screen buildings from one another, to enhance buildings and their settings, to screen car parks and other utilitarian areas and generally to create a very attractive environment (See Registered Historic Park & Garden PGW(Dy)47(CER) ). The south library block of the Hugh Owen building on the piazza was reportedly completed first, with the further horizontal west facing ranges stepping down hill to its north following sequentially. In 1979 the Hugh Owen building received a commendation from the Royal Institute of British Architects and a Design Award from the Standing Conference on University Libraries.  

Modernist university library and teaching complex in reinforced concrete, with gravel aggregate panels, brick and steel-framed ribbon windows. Organised as three very wide flat-roofed rectangular blocks each of three or four storey height, gradually stepping down the hillside from the highest library block at the south end to a lower end to the north, with a short projecting east wing between the middle and lower ranges. Landscaping raises the whole range above the road into the campus which runs parallel. Ribbon windows are organised to flow from one block to the next with the mid-level windows continuing as the upper storey windows of the next block down the hillside. Overhangs and under passes on pilotis at the joints of blocks create a sheltered pedestrian walkway snaking around and under the building for students to navigate the campus in bad weather. Massive library block at south facing on to the wide central piazza designed to relate to the Great Hall in height, shape and materials but also to manage sunlight within the library; ground floor deeply recessed under the first floor held up on pilotis, providing shade as well as a covered pedestrian walkway. First floor has continuous ribbon window and is in turn sheltered by the cantilevered bulk of the second floor, clad in aggregate panels punctuated by vertical slit windows, with deep square cavities in the overhanging under side. Recessed from the outer edge of the upper volume is a raised brick cuboid with clerestory windows to allow light into the middle of the library’s top storey. An exterior brick balcony on the north side of this block connects a footpath to an entrance into the middle floor of the library. Teaching blocks are successively lower and much narrower from front to back. Middle block is three storeys set forwards from library block, with projecting overhang sheltering much of the upper ribbon window, ground floor blind across its southernmost half before another ribbon window begins. SW corner at ground floor cut-away with chamfered corner for pedestrian pathway and entrance into lower lecture theatre with the floors above on pilotis. To rear the whole ground floor is recessed behind pilotis forming a sheltered colonnade which descends the exterior steps and passes under the projecting east wing, which has three storeys partly raised on pilotis with ribbon windows to north and south and a blind square east face. The lowest lying north block is set forwards towards the road again and begins as three storeys at its joint with the other blocks and gains another floor as it proceeds north and downhill. Lower two storeys slightly recessed on west side and more deeply recessed to east continuing the sheltered walkway. To front south, lower floor is recessed with sheltered passage through to other side of building and to recently added exterior lift attached to middle range. At far north end lower two storeys are deeply recessed under tall pilotis with square concrete grid overhead. Totally glazed ground floor foyer with chamfered corners, brick and ribbon window to floor above. A pitched roof block was added to the northeast in 1993 linked to the lower-range of the Hugh Owen building by an overhead enclosed walkway but is not of interest.  

Lower blocks divided by axial north-south corridors generally with seminar rooms on the east and academic offices on the west with views out over the town and sea, lecture halls in east wing projection and middle range ground floor. Open plan reading room taking up most of upper floor of the middle range was renamed Iris De Freitas room in 2016 in honour of the Aberystwyth alumnus who arrived in 1919 and later became the first woman lawyer in the Caribbean. This room recently refurbished with some of the corrugated concrete roof structure left exposed. North entry into the mid-level of library block leads to a wide foyer with staircase down to ground floor with internal window above and entry into first floor reading room, both in brick with chamfered corners. Third floor library reading room is a wide-open plan with inserted silent study rooms off centre to the south, brick rectangles with chamfered corners and interior glazing.  

Listed for special architectural and historic interest as a key example of a twentieth century university library in Wales with attached teaching and office ranges, by the leading Welsh architectural practice of the post-war period. The largest of the Penglais campus buildings by footprint, it most clearly expresses the Percy Thomas Partnership’s concern with making the most of the landscape whilst enabling a historic surge in the availability of university education. Group value with other Listed structures on the Penglais campus. The 1993 extension to the NE is not of special 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.