Trem-y-fron, Including Forecourt Walls & Railings

Trem-y-fron is a three-storey terrace of four late Victorian townhouses built around 1885, almost certainly as speculative development. The buildings are constructed of red brick with terracotta dressings to the eaves, labels and sills. They have a slate roof with a tiled ridge and two two-stage chimneys with pots. The terrace is composed of two distinct parts, with numbers 3 and 4 stepped down slightly from numbers 1 and 2.

The right-hand pair of houses (numbers 1 and 2) feature outer entrance bays with wide segmentally-arched doorways. Number 2 retains its original six-panel door with narrow flanking lights and plain overlight, while number 1 has a similar arrangement but with a glazed modern door. Both have paired sash windows with six-pane upper sections and plain lower sections, with moulded sills and returned labels. Above the entrances are plain two-pane sashes on the first floor and smaller four-pane sashes with segmental heads on the second floor. The central bays contain large rectangular wooden oriels with supporting decorative brackets and dentilated cornices, topped with leaded roofs. Each oriel retains plain tripartite glazing with a central arched window and flanking transomed lights. The second floor features large arched sash windows set within large gabled dormers with decorative bargeboards and terracotta ridge finials.

The left-hand pair (numbers 3 and 4) have similar upper floors but lack the central oriels, instead having three plain sashes with a shared label. The entrances are narrower with flat arches, six-panel doors and plain overlights. The ground floor windows are triple sashes set forward as a shallow bay with leaded roofs.

The property is bounded by low brick forecourt walls with moulded capping and surmounting decorative railings.

The terrace reflects the prosperity and optimism that came to Bala and other rural market towns with the arrival of the railway in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. The red brick and terracotta materials were brought in by rail, exemplifying the shift from indigenous vernacular building traditions dependent on local materials to the more standardised, geographically non-specific speculative architecture of the later nineteenth century.

The interiors were not inspected at the time of survey.