This iconic building on Aberystwyth promenade forms part of the University of Aberystwyth in Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, Wales. It was built in 1795 by John Nash and is a Grade I listed building.

It was originally intended as a grand railway hotel, the Castle Hotel. It was built around Castle House which had been designed in the 1790s by John Nash for Sir Uvedale Price, a leading theorist of the picturesque movement.

Castle House was bought in 1864 by Thomas Savin, the railway entrepreneur, who commissioned the architect J.P. Seddon to transform it into a hotel, the first of a number that he intended to build along Cardigan Bay as part of the travel and tourism boom of the nineteenth century. The building was first extended to the south towards the castle and then to the north where the Quad is today. But Savin was hit badly by the Stock Exchange panic of 1865, and in an attempt to recoup some of the £80,000 he had spent on the building, he opened the hotel before it was completed. His venture failed and in 1866 he was declared bankrupt.

In 1867 the building was bought for £10,000 by the University Committee as the first home of the University of Wales, and Seddon was asked to complete as much of the building as finances allowed. The college opened on 16 October 1872 with three teaching staff and 26 students.

Tags: Architecture Historic building Cardigan bay Aberystwyth Aberystwyth ceredigion wales Aberystwyth University

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