Cyfarthfa Castle

Cyfarthfa Castle is a large country house built in a Picturesque castle style, situated on a terraced site. The building is primarily rectangular, featuring almost symmetrical entrance and garden fronts that converge at a circular corner tower. The exterior is constructed with coursed bull-nosed facings and ashlar dressings. It has crenellated parapets with false machicolation on the towers and weathered stringcourses on the rest of the structure. A stair and outlook turret is located at the rear of the corner drum-tower, which also has dummy arrow loops and rectangular hoodmoulds, with the drum tower featuring 3-light mullioned windows on the top floor. The entrance front and drum have cross windows (which may be later additions), while the garden front has sash windows with glazing bars on the ground floor. Both fronts have central towers with splayed angles, and the main entrance features a splayed bay with a finial over the porch, round turrets, and arched openings, along with an oriel above the Tudor garden doorway.

To the left of the main building is a castellated screen-wall and towered entrances that lead to the former stable courtyard and offices, which have been rebuilt as school accommodation. The composition includes walls with dummy loops, a polygonal end turret, and a solid left-hand gatehouse with an arched entry beneath a 3-light window, along with a right-hand entry situated between round and square turrets. Tudor-style school buildings are located at the rear.

The interior retains a main suite of state rooms, including an entrance hall, library, drawing room, and dining room, which are now used as a museum and art gallery. The entrance hall is baronial in style, featuring a ribbed ceiling, heraldic cornice, Gothic shafts, and panelling on the doorcases, along with a castellated chimney-piece in the library. The other public rooms exhibit neo-classical design elements, including anthemion plaster bands, egg-and-dart cornices, and wide architraves with angle paterae. The drawing rooms have ceiling roses, a fine caryatid chimney-piece, and scallop-shell niches in the long drawing-room, while Ionic pilasters from a columned screen remain in the dining room.