North Wales Hospital: Primary Range, including adjoining walled 'Airing Courts' to NW and SE

North Wales Hospital: Primary Range, including adjoining walled 'Airing Courts'

A large U-shaped asylum building in Tudorbethan style, constructed of limestone ashlar with bathstone dressings and slate roofs. Two-stage grouped chimneys, some with octagonal stacks, punctuate the roofline.

The principal entrance front faces north-east and comprises 15 windows grouped into 5 bays of 3 windows each, with the central and outer bays advanced. All but the central entrance bay rise to 3 storeys, with the ground floor raised above a basement. The central bay is of 2 storeys with a double-height upper floor. A wide flight of modern stone steps surmounted by a cast iron Gothic balustrade—probably contemporary, featuring conjoined quatrefoil oculi, scroll-work and spiral newels—rises to the entrance. The entrance is housed within a full-height projecting porch with surmounting shaped gable. The Tudor-arched doorway has a moulded returned label and delicately carved foliated spandrels, with vertically-panelled double doors. Above the entrance is a framed rectangular recess bearing a relief-carved scroll inscribed 'Anno Domini MDCCCXXXXVIII'. A tall mullioned and transomed window of 9 lights lights the upper porch, with a heraldic carved group in the gable apex. Flanking the porch are 3-light transmullioned windows to each floor, those on the upper floor taller with returned moulded labels. The central bay is crowned with a pierced occular parapet with square finials corbelled out at the corners, a feature repeated on the gable, and geometric finials to all apexes (some lost). A large square clock tower with shaped gables and surmounting octagonal cupola rises behind the central bay, its front gable bearing a clock face with blind oculi within square frames to the remainder. Labelled cross-windows and stringcourses run throughout. The recessed flanking bays contain central shaped gables and slightly smaller outer triangular gables, coped and finialled as before, with heraldic shields. The ground and first floors have central 3-light and outer 2-light transmullioned windows; the central bays of the second floor have cross-windows and tall single-light outer windows. The advanced outer bays are marginally taller and parapeted with shaped gables to the centre. Two-storey canted bays to the centres feature pierced lozenge parapets; cross windows run throughout with single transomed lights to the bay returns. Moulded stringcourses run between the floors, and primary small-pane glazing is maintained throughout.

Long returned wings, formerly also of 15 windows in 5 bays and 3 storeys, flank the primary range. The Afallon wing to the south-east is largely unaltered, whilst the Ablet wing to the north-west had its elevation rebuilt and extended outwards by some 2 metres in the later 19th century. The Afallon wing displays 4 of its 5 three-bay sections, the western-most having been absorbed into a link block during the later phase. A three-bay central projecting section features a 2-storey canted bay and shaped gable to centre. Flanking three-bay recessed sections have central shaped and plain flanking gables. Transmullioned windows are mostly now fitted with inserted 1930s steel-framed windows, the original mullions and transoms having been cut out. The outer bays originally featured full-length shouldered-arched verandahs (shown in the architect's initial proposal drawing), of which crenellated open porches to the centre remain, supported on octagonal stone columns. These have Tudor-arched entrances with original panelled doors. The central bay of the Ablet wing belongs to the primary phase, whilst the remaining bays, now advanced in front of it, relate to the later re-fronting and have plain gables, stringcourses and transmullioned windows.

Adjoining the main front to the south-east and north-west and advanced to its sides are two primary walled airing courts. These are large rectangular walled enclosures with limestone rubble walls rising to an average of 2.2 metres; sloped sandstone copings are stepped up over entrances to the western and inner faces, which were formerly gated.

The interiors are generally plain and understated. The entrance hall faces a modest stone stair built around a square central pier; an arched niche with an inscription tablet facing the entrance is now boarded. Chamfered Tudor arches lead off to corridors to the left and right. Generous moulded architraves frame the principal doorways, with deeply-splayed and simply-moulded 'cell' doors arranged in rows on both floors of the long rear wings. A large full-height board room above the porch has been sub-divided with lower ceilings inserted; a Gothic arch with quatrefoil spandrel decoration survives in the void above, presumably associated with a decorative open roof.