Craig-y-nos

Craig-y-nos is a large castellated country house in Scottish baronial style, built in the mid-19th century with substantial later 19th-century extensions. The building is positioned to maximise views of the surrounding mountains, with its front courtyard opening onto the mountain road to the west and the east frontage overlooking the River Tawe and the mountain ranges beyond.

The original castle was constructed of grey and brown snecked rubble with matching ashlar or rockfaced dressings. The later 19th-century extensions are of pink Crai sandstone with contrasting pale dressings in grey rockfaced or buff ashlar. The roof is Welsh slate, adorned with a plethora of mostly narrow rectangular corniced stacks, many retaining terracotta pots and a number of decorative lead finials including weathervanes to the apexes.

The mid-19th-century entrance frontage is highly asymmetrical with deliberately varied narrow lights of different designs at different levels across three main storeys. Twin towers with pyramidal roofs are linked by a gablet top incorporating a harp motif, forming a tall two-bay range. The small narrow lights of varying forms have hoods continuing to the top floor. A two-light window with trefoil heads and mullion within a wide recessed surround is set centrally at first-floor level over a wide four-centred arch. The arch formerly incorporated false machicolations. Below this protrudes a heavily buttressed Tudor-arched entrance porch with stepped parapet, with single-storey lean-to extensions either side.

To the right is a lower two-bay wing with a crow-stepped gable to the left, incorporating a corbelled turret room at first-floor level. Double square-headed lights appear at each level to the right, with the continuous hoodmould at first floor extending to become a sill band to the left. At the end right projects a later cross wing with steeply pitched roof meeting a two-storey former stable court range which forms the south frontage to the entrance courtyard.

To the left of the porch entrance is the main later 19th-century addition. The first unit is a three-storey three-bay castellated range, with the two main bays featuring false machicolations and topped by embattled turrets. Four-light windows with mullions and transoms appear at each floor in varying designs, with decorative relieving arches at ground floor level. Adjoining to the left is a lower cross wing with crow-stepped gables and long narrow lights, attached to the clock tower. This has a steeply pitched pyramidal roof with swept eaves, lucarnes and weathervane over louvred belfry openings. Clock faces appear on each ashlar side over a deep moulded band echoing the machicolations of the main tower, with a heavy surround to the ground-floor doorway.

The theatre frontage extends at right angles forming the north frontage of the courtyard. The rear of the theatre and the north side of the complex are formed by an extensive dressing-room wing, fairly utilitarian in appearance over two and three storeys.

The east frontage facing the river is comparable to the west in its fusion of the two periods. To the right (north) is the Patti extension, again with embattled parapet and turrets—one polygonal and one taller and rectangular—and large windows over three storeys. An attached wing with crow-stepped gable adjoins. To the left (south) is the original mid-19th-century castle with twin pyramidal-roofed towers, a large inserted first-floor window and ground-floor bay window. Stepped back to the left is a lower two-window range with small cross-gable and tall polygonal end turret with slender broached spire.

Extending southwards for ten bays is the conservatory of glass and iron with a replaced wooden roof. It has a lozenge-shaped east front with upper panels incorporating coloured glass, measuring 80 feet by 27 feet (24.4 metres by 8.2 metres). Attached at the south is a long narrow former aviary of timber, iron and glass, though masked by later extension. This glazed wing backs onto the former stable courtyard, with single-storey hospital ward wings added at the southeast on the site of the Patti pavilion in the Winter Garden.

The south courtyard frontage is formed by the former service wing, an extension and enlargement of the original mid-19th-century development. A two-storey range comprises a three-window hipped-roof square building to the left, a central gatehouse with wide-arched entrance and embattled parapet, and to the right a lower unit with prominent crow-stepped gabled dormers. At the end right is a projecting cross wing with similar gable. Windows to these service rooms are mostly four-pane sashes, with prominent ridge and lateral narrow stacks. The former stable yard behind was remodelled both by Patti and the hospital but retains two wide carriage arches to the west.

Despite its institutional use, the interior retains most of its original layout, though the function of some rooms has changed. A short flight of stairs leads from a front lobby with skylight surrounded by probably re-used Jacobean woodwork to the sequence of main first-floor reception rooms reached by a lateral arched corridor, all with spectacular views over the mountains to the east. Much decorative detail is retained, including moulded plasterwork comprising friezes, cornices, arches and ceilings, and Gothic-arched recesses.

The Drawing Room has a deep coffered ceiling. The Dining Room has a moulded egg-and-dart cornice. The Music Room ceiling features decorative foliage plasterwork to ceiling panels incorporating ventilators above a strapwork frieze. The Billiard Room retains a high coved ceiling and its original ceiling lights, though these are now blocked in. The fireplace in the Morning Room has a carved wood chimney piece with foliage motifs and tiles with scenes from Walter Scott's novels; a similar fireplace is in the Dining Room.

Other woodwork includes panelled shutters and reveals, panelled doors and door surrounds. In the Drawing Room is a doorcase incorporating a Gothic-arched recess. Many windows of varied style—some with trefoil heads—retain their original frames, some metal, and some retain original glass and many fittings.

Bedrooms occupy the second floor, including that of Madame Patti, some incorporating small turret recesses with tiny lights. Service stairs of stained wood with twisted balusters at each end ascend over three storeys. The main central staircase was replaced by a lift. The former chapel of Madame Patti is located in the older south wing and has a window of arched lights incorporating coloured glass. The third floor contains further rooms of generous size.

The conservatory attached at the southeast has a tiled floor and wooden barrel roof replacing an original curved glass roof, supported by slender cast-iron piers and trusses. The attached aviary also retains iron roof trusses and decorative window frames.