St John's College (formerly Ty-to-Maen)

St John's College (formerly Ty-to-Maen)

This is a substantial mansion built in the Tudor and Gothic Revival style. The building is constructed mostly of snecked rock-faced stone with Bathstone dressings, and is roofed with small slate tiles featuring gable finials and terracotta ridge tiles. It has two storeys and attics, with a small octagonal painted metal domed-roof lantern topped by a finial and clustered polygonal brick stacks astride the ridge. The hoppers are dated 1885.

The main frontage comprises five bays and displays considerable architectural richness. At the left is a three-storey tower with an embattled parapet, corbel table and gargoyles. The tower features a chequered band of ashlar and brick, string courses, and narrow single-light rectangular windows with moulded surrounds and hoods at the upper level. Blind trefoil-headed tracery incorporating shields adorns the tower. In the angle between the tower and the second bay is a single storey pitched stone-roofed bay window. The second and fourth bays project and feature gables; the second bay has a two-light window on the second floor and four-light windows on the first and ground floors.

The third bay contains the main entrance and is the most elaborate section. On the first floor to the left is a single-light window recessed behind a rectangular opening with transom and trefoil-headed tracery below. The centrepiece is a six-light Gothic-style staircase window comprising two tiers of three trefoil-headed lights under a small ornamental pediment incorporating a bas-relief depicting dragons. To the right is a three-light cross window with trefoil-headed moulding to the centre light. The ground floor has a porch with an arcaded parapet that doubles as a first floor balcony front. The porch has a deeply moulded arch enriched with ball flower and foliage ornament, a hoodmould with face stops, and twin columns. To the right is a five trefoil-headed light window, with a single light to the left. The porch interior is decorated with banded rock-faced stone and ashlar, and has a three trefoil-headed light window under a wide arch with foliage mouldings and unusual knot stops. The main entrance doorway is pointed-arched and enriched with foliage mouldings and a tympanum bearing a relief figure of an angel holding a Latin scroll reading "Ingredientibus pax et exeuntibus". The fourth bay has a three-light attic window with blind tracery and a two-storey canted bay window with panelled embattled parapet. The fifth bay at the right end has two elaborate gabled dormers with crocketed finials and double lights flanked by pinnacles, two three-light first floor windows, and a ground floor three-light shallow bay window flanked by single-light openings, one incorporating a narrow doorway.

The side elevation to the right features two prominent gables. The left gable is dominated by a wide external stack of brick and stone rising from an offset above a five-light canted bay window with a steep-pitched ashlar roof. The right gable has a projecting two-storey four-light canted bay window similar to that on the frontage, with a deep parapet and paired attic lights above. Between these is a long narrow staircase window of two cusped lights with quatrefoil tracery, with the upper and lower sections separated by blind tracery panels. At the extreme right end is a lower two-storey brick bay with a two-window range surmounted by a turret similar to the tower on the frontage but with plainer battlements and corbels. An adjoining stepped down single-window range bay is at the extreme end. The rear elevation is almost entirely of brick and utilitarian in character.

Attached to the side nearest the stables is Honeysuckle Cottage, a single-storey three-bay range with end cross gables and four and six-pane sash windows. This range was formerly used as servants' quarters to the house and now functions as a separate dwelling. It is probably a survivor of the previous building complex on this site.

The mullion and transom windows throughout feature small panes in the upper lights, with most trefoil-headed lights characteristic of the Gothic Revival style.

Despite the building's institutional use, much of the rich interior fitting survives. The plan comprises a large central reception hall and formal staircase with a corridor to the rear, off which lead the main reception rooms facing the front and side elevations, with access to a rear service corridor. Many rooms feature decorative plasterwork, large ornate fireplaces and dark stained heavily moulded woodwork. Door surrounds have reed mouldings and friezes, with six-panelled doors, some enriched with carved panels. Outer doors are chunky variants of the plank and batten type, some in grid form, with full width iron hinges. Service hatches to rooms are also moulded with quatrefoils and linenfold patterns and have decorative hinges. Stained glass is plentiful throughout, mostly depicting naturalistic flowers and birds.

The entrance lobby is very richly decorated with stained glass to the main window. Opposite is a wide basket-arched screen incorporating twenty-two separate lights glazed with stained glass, though the two central lights at the entrance doorway have been replaced. The archways are moulded and there is a carved tympanum to both the inner and outer faces of the main entrance doorway.

The main entrance hall has a pointed-arched three-bay arcade to the stairs enriched with ballflower and face stops, supported on marble columns, with a coffered ceiling and friezes below. A richly moulded open well Jacobean-style staircase rises through the central arch, featuring elaborate newel posts incorporating griffins holding shields with monograms and Gothic moulding to the balusters. The staircase wall has deeply moulded small panels, and the boarded ceiling features reeded joists, corbels in the form of grotesques, and a strapwork frieze. A fine stained glass staircase window with floral motifs lights the staircase.

At the tower end is a room with a Neo-classical style white marble fireplace featuring egg and dart motif and lions with drapes. The ceiling has a very deep frieze of Adam-style motifs with vine moulding to the cornice and a coffered ceiling with metal roses and ventilators. Arched recesses to the tower have beast stops to the hoodmould and pineapple and vine mouldings.

On the other side of the hall, a reception room now used as a music room has a coffered plaster ceiling and a large fireplace with a deep hood and Welsh inscription in Gothic lettering beneath an ogee arch. A similar but smaller fireplace with deep hood and ogee arch is located in another reception room.

At the end of the corridor to the side of a second staircase is a room with a beamed ceiling supported on corbels. This room contains a huge Tudor-arched fireplace with a deep hood enriched with bands of moulding and shallow niches to the sides. The fireplace floor has narrow tiles in green and black, with a chevron pattern of red, orange and green to the back. The room has a dado rail.

The adjacent staircase is of dark stained wood with an exceptionally deep handrail and a stained glass window. The corridor has a coffered ceiling, decorative plasterwork and Gothic arches. The first floor rooms and corridor contain similar features to those on the ground floor.