Bangor University Main Arts (formerly University College of North Wales main building)

Bangor University Main Arts Building (formerly University College of North Wales main building) is a Grade I listed structure centred on a cathedral-like tower. Henry Hare designed the 1911 sections in buff-coloured Cefn stone laid in snecked courses with freestone dressings, flat buttresses, slate roofs with parapets, and stone chimney stacks. Windows are mullioned and transomed with leaded lights.

The scheme comprises several linked ranges. At the northwest, facing College Road, stands the Prichard-Jones Hall range: a two-storey, six-window front with advanced end pavilions. It has a steep roof, crenellated parapet, and a bellcote with lantern and spirelet. Tall segmental-headed hall windows are double-transomed with panel tracery. A projecting flat-roofed ground floor features entrances at either end with deeply recessed doors. The left-hand end pavilion has a central stepped buttress flanked at second-floor level by two segmental-headed windows with unusual teardrop oculi. The right-hand pavilion is lower, with a dentil cornice over a three-light window.

The original main entrance occupies the southwest gable end of this range. The broad gable features Tudor octagonal end turrets and Baroque niches containing a statue of Lewis Morris at the apex. A central segmental-headed four-light window is double-transomed with panel tracery and flanked by buttresses. Advanced below is a triple-arched porch with panelled pilasters, coats of arms, and a Latin inscription dated 1911. Enriched spandrels appear over recessed entrances, each with double doors and lugged architraves. Shaped gables at right angles to either side terminate the advanced end bays of adjoining ranges, with commemorative tablets bearing garlanded borders below each gable. At the top of the entrance steps stand cast-iron square, tapered lamp standards with bracketed octagonal lamps and openwork ornament.

The spinal administrative range, together with the 1911 Library wing, forms an L-plan group on the east side of the larger southwest quadrangle. The administrative range has an eight-bay, two-storey front; the advanced left-hand bay matches the gable described above. Its parapet is balustraded over cross-frame windows with architraves at first-floor level and semicircular pediments at ground-floor level. A Baroque entrance at the centre features a small-pane circular window over the door.

The two-stage tower to the right has a crenellated parapet and a taller stair turret on the southeast side, with splayed corners. Each face displays two segmental-headed double-transomed windows flanking an ogee niche. The niches contain statues of St David (northwest), Llywelyn ap Gruffudd (northeast), Owain Gwynedd (southeast), and Owain Glyndŵr (southwest), all positioned above coats of arms.

The 1911 Library wing at right angles presents a nine-window front with a central royal coat of arms. Two bays are advanced with tall first-floor oriel windows. The parapet is crenellated, with gabled and panelled buttress pilasters. Windows are arch-headed lights, with square-headed first-floor windows and segmental-headed ground-floor windows. The entrance has an open-pedimented doorcase, lugged architrave, and double doors, plus a plaque with a Latin inscription. An advanced gable-ended bay at the far right faces the 1963 Library block, with an attic window above a statue of Goronwy Owen flanked by cross-frame windows under an overall label.

The gable end facing Penrallt Road has full-height buttresses, extruded corners, and small attic windows. A central two-storey splayed bay features a horseshoe-shaped high arch above containing a recessed three-light window. This elevation has no leaded glass.

The three-storey southeast side of the Library, overlooking the city, has a one-plus-nine bay front, stylistically foreshadowing Sir Edwin Lutyens at Castle Drogo. The advanced and gabled end bay has an attic with Baroque scrolls over stepped buttresses. The second floor displays a statue of Bishop Morgan flanked by cross-frame windows under an overall label. Symmetrical to the right is a repeat of the courtyard elevation, with the addition of a slightly swept-out ground floor featuring single-light windows and entrances below the oriels. First-floor windows are set in splayed recesses. Forward to the right beyond the tower is the southeast range of the northeast courtyard. This has a gabled southwest end with a slate-hung attic to the left and a chimney breast to the right, the latter with an open-pedimented tablet. A two-storey porch facing the Penrallt Road entrance has a part-balustraded parapet, tapered buttresses on chamfered corners, and a round-arched entry with a multi-pane fanlight. A swagged shield appears above.

The main three-storey-and-attic southeast elevation is symmetrical and conveys an especially collegiate character. Tapered cross-range gable ends are advanced at either end of a ten-bay range, the ground floor of which is arcaded with the central four bays open, forming a loggia. Two-storey chimney stacks and flat-roofed attics sit over the parapet. A second-floor cornice extends to the edges of the end pavilions over shields, with splayed broad buttresses. Lintels appear over first-floor windows and broad ground-floor windows, the latter bowed to the centre and with high parapets containing the UCNW monogram. First-floor double-transomed windows between have lugged architraves and open pediments. Stilted-arch arcade windows and part-glazed doors appear at the ends of the loggia.

The northeast end of this range repeats the southwest gable end. Advanced to its right is a three-window bay with boldly tapered end pilasters and double-transomed first-floor windows. A nine-bay tall-roofed range beyond is set into the hillside, largely two-storey and attic with a higher attic to the southeastern three bays, also featuring double-transomed ground-floor windows. Dividing pilasters separate the remaining bays. A segmental-headed entrance appears in the northwest end bay and a smaller one lower down. An octagonal bellcote tops the range. The gabled northwest return elevation is partly screened by the broader gable end of the hall range, which has a stronger Arts and Crafts character: a four-light gable window, crenellated broad end pilasters with narrow lights, and grills to lower windows.

The enclosed smaller northeast courtyard is terraced, with detail similar to that on the exterior of each range. The hall range is at the top and has an ivy-clad ground-floor projection. The inner side of the southeast range is symmetrical, with a lower gabled projection featuring polygonal corner turrets, lateral chimney breasts, and a frontispiece with a three-light transomed window over a scrolled inscription and round-arched entrance. Six second-floor and three first-floor segmental-headed windows appear to either side, above a projecting ground floor. To the southwest, the range is dominated by the tower's six-storey northeast face, including a splayed oriel with crenellated parapet and a recessed plain Venetian window. The lowest stage is splayed out. A twin-gabled three-storey block projects to the right of the tower, matching a similar projection opposite (northeast range). The four-tier terrace has rubble walls, freestone copings, and ball finials, with a central abstract steel sculpture on a rusticated concrete plinth entitled "The Genesis" by John Robinson, installed 1993 and donated by Harwin Components Ltd, Ynyswen, Treorchy.

The 1963 Library extension is at a right angle to the 1911 Library wing, the two connected by a two-storey glazed link. It forms the long southwest side of the larger southwest quadrangle. This is a wide and shallow flat-roofed Modernist cuboid with two storeys facing the quadrangle and an additional basement level facing Penrallt Road. A concrete frame is clad in local slate stone blocks in a variety of shades laid in snecked courses to match the Henry Hare scheme, with a plain concrete entablature of frieze and slight cornice. Steel-framed windows include a massive horizontal glazed rectangle on the upper two floors of both long sides, with six lights to the upper floor and four lights below, separated vertically by 24 triangular-prism concrete mullions (plus half mullions at the far ends) and horizontally by light terrazzo square panels. The main entrance on the far left of the inner elevation is sheltered by a cantilevered concrete slab portico, with a panel window above letterboxed by dark terrazzo. The Penrallt Road elevation has six two-pane horizontal windows at basement level, widely spaced in the slate stone plinth, and at the far right glazing over three floors divided by terrazzo panels in different shades.

A shorter square two-storey block in the same materials at the northwest end (connected by a short concrete link section) was also built in 1963 and used as a plinth for one end of the 1968 extension. This extension begins at a right angle to the library, completes the main quadrangle by closing off the northwest side, and returns towards the southeast to join with the gable end of the entrance block in front of Prichard-Jones Hall. This is Brutalist with an expressed bush-hammered concrete frame, steel-framed glazing, and a trapezoidal felt roof. Four storeys in height, across most of the northwest range the upper three storeys are held up on thin pilotis, allowing pedestrian and vehicle access into the quadrangle. Towards the north corner, a snecked slatestone curtain wall with an upper section of concrete panels resumes to ground level, with a curved rear wall (to a lecture room) projecting into the underpass and continuing into a projecting sloping dividing wall between the underpass and the north corner reception block. The north corner block completing the northeast range is heavily glazed at ground-floor level, housing the main entrance and reception. Overhanging upper two floors with cantilevers on all three outward-facing sides use tall vertical windows separated by double-floor-height concrete mullions. Dormers and small balconies appear at the top floor. The northeast link section joining the Brutalist corner block to Prichard-Jones Hall is more restrained, with ribbon windows at first and second floors on both sides.

The main doors to the Prichard-Jones Hall block open onto a part-groin-vaulted entrance hall with original three-lamp light fittings and brass War Memorial tablets by F Osborne and Co Ltd of London. Straight ahead is the 150-foot-long Prichard-Jones Hall. Its nine-bay arched coffered ceiling has panelled ribs and strapwork-ornamented ceiling panels, with an apsidal dais end. Coats of arms appear over windows, with panelled dado and other fine woodwork detail. A gallery raked over the entrance hall has a panelled screen front and segmental open pediments to the three doorways. Original brass light fittings are octagonal. The main staircase lies to the southeast in a groin-vaulted stairwell with a marble-topped closed stone balustrade and stained glass window. An open-pedimented and carved doorcase at the top leads to the hall gallery. To the southeast run two tiers of groin-vaulted corridors with panelled ribs (not glazed until after the Second World War). The first floor has various bronze oval plaques, panelled doors and cornices, and a similar pedimented doorcase at the southeast end leading to back stairs. The ground-floor corridor is plainer. Stained glass windows at the southeast end by Dudley Forsyth of London, 1910, depict a classical subject and are signed "Architectus Dedit" with the monogram of a hare. Additional stained glass by Forsyth, relocated from Ebenezer Presbyterian Chapel, Newborough, was installed in 2024. Short arms of the passages lead off to the Library; that to the first floor contains a porcelain museum. The finest single room is the Council Chamber on the first floor, with a segmental vaulted ceiling featuring panelled Jacobean plasterwork and coats of arms of the Welsh princes, full-height wainscoting, segmental-pedimented doorcases, and ashlar fireplaces and overmantels with panelled and fireplaces. It also contains two busts by W Goscombe John: one of William Cadwallader Davies and another of Sir Isambard Owen.

The northeast range has a smaller Powis Chamber concert hall with coved ceiling ridges and the Hall of Illusion Mural, painted from 1991 to 1993 by Ed Povey, comprising seven panels framed by trompe-l'oeil stonework. The southeast range has a metal staircase with barley-twist uprights to the courtyard side. The Library range contains the ground-floor Lloyd Reading Room, which Hare had intended to be a museum, and the first-floor Shankland Library with a segmental vaulted roof featuring square panel-lining and 36 heraldic shields in oak frames. Two bays are screened off (corresponding to those with external oriels) and have broken Baroque-pedimented openings; one bay also has wooden gates. A splayed oriel appears over the entrance with a similar doorcase.

The 1960s library wing is mainly open-plan. The foyer area and central staircase with timber rail have dark terrazzo flooring with yellow lozenges and stair risers. One rear window has an Art Nouveau cast-iron balustrade believed to have been donated by Lord Kenyon, President of the College. The Main Arts reception has been altered. A first-floor corridor links six double-floor-height lecture rooms, with the second floor having only offices along one side and the third floor a mix of offices and seminar rooms, some with balconies and others with over-lighting from dormers.