Carmarthenshire County Museum (formerly Bishop's Palace)

Carmarthenshire County Museum (formerly Bishop's Palace)

This Elizabethan style former palace, now in use as a museum, comprises a long entrance range facing west, with south, east and north service ranges arranged around a former courtyard. The courtyard has been roofed over to form a top-lit stair hall. The building is two storeys with an attic storey. The walls are rendered with roughcast, and windows are predominantly wooden mullioned or sash windows. The slate roof has overhanging eaves, is hipped behind the entrance range, and features roughcast chimney stacks with octagonal shafts.

The symmetrical entrance front displays nine windows with the central and outer bays projected forward beneath shaped gables. The central bay contains an ashlar porch with clasping polygonal buttresses that are panelled above an impost band. The entrance itself is Tudor-arched with spandrels bearing crosses within shields. Above, an embattled parapet displays a central shield with a cross, surmounted by a bishop's mitre. The side walls feature pointed windows. The main entrance door is double and half-glazed, set beneath a pointed overlight and flanked by narrow cross windows. In the upper storey sits a three-light transomed window with a hood mould framing a tympanum displaying a shield and mitre in high relief. The attic contains a three-light window with two-pane sashes and another shield and mitre beneath the apex.

On either side of the central bay are three cross windows grouped as 1+2, with corresponding flat-roof dormers. The right-hand side has an additional small two-pane sash window in the lower storey. The outer bays project further forward than the central bay and contain three-light transomed windows in each storey, the upper bearing a hood mould with a tympanum showing a shield and mitre in high relief. The attic has mullioned windows similar to the central bay. The outer sides have pointed doorways with panelled doors and overlights, each recessed beneath a corbel table.

The three-window south end wall of the entrance range features narrow tall two-pane sashes and a dormer window to the right. A four-window return elevation to the rear, where the entrance range projects beyond the south wing, has eight-pane sash windows and a two-light flat-roof dormer to the right.

The south wing contains a first-floor chapel and displays six windows with asymmetrical emphasis created by full-height canted bays positioned left of centre and set back from the right end, both with parapets bearing notional crenellations. The left-hand bay window, forming the central element of the chapel, has a three-light window with shafts below a sill band, surmounted by a pyramidal roof with metal finial. It is flanked by two windows with dressed stone surrounds and cushed heads. The lower storey contains twelve-pane sashes, paired at the bay windows, while the upper storey of the right-hand bay window has paired eight-pane sashes.

The five-window east wing features canted full-height outer bays with parapets similar to the south wing. Bay windows contain paired eight-pane sashes in the upper storey and paired twelve-pane sashes below. The left-hand has a half-glazed door with overlight. Between these, windows are paired eight-pane sashes in the upper storey but the lower storey has triple twelve-pane sashes.

The asymmetrical north service wing incorporates earlier work that survived the fire of 1902, retaining a pattern of eight-pane windows in the upper storey and twelve-pane windows below. At the left end is an oval tablet bearing a shield and mitre in low relief. To its right are windows in each storey, a half-lit door with small-pane overlight, non-aligned windows, and an oval tablet with coat of arms. Further right is a canted bay window in the lower storey with parapet, followed by earlier twelve-pane sash windows.

A service yard on the northwest side of the palace contains buildings ranged around it with pebble-dashed walls, accessed through replaced doors on the north side via an L-shaped wall attached to the entrance range. The buildings include, on the east side, a dairy and larder with louvred openings.

Internally, the central hall is lit by a domed lantern supported on broad arches. The quarter-turn stairs and landing have square newels and fret-cut balusters. The chapel has been retained as a museum exhibit. It features a three-bay boarded wagon roof incorporating king-post trusses with curved struts. The altar has a wood-panelled reredos with shallow blind statue niches right and left. Benches are placed sideways facing each other across a central aisle, with panelled fronts and moulded ends bearing shell finials. A cusped round-headed niche in the left-hand wall contains a brass plaque commemorating the chapel's consecration.