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Cathays Park () or Cardiff Civic Centre is a civic centre area in the city centre of Cardiff, the capital city of Wales, consisting of a number of early 20th century buildings and a central park area, Alexandra Gardens. It includes Edwardian buildings such as the Temple of Peace, City Hall, the National Museum and Gallery of Wales and several buildings belonging to the Cardiff University campus. It also includes Cardiff Crown Court, the administrative headquarters of the Welsh Government, and the more modern Cardiff Central police station. The Pevsner architectural guide to the historic county of Glamorgan judges Cathays Park to be "the finest civic centre in the British Isles".
p. 220 The area falls within the Cathays electoral ward and forms part of the Cathays Park Conservation Area, which was designated in 1975.
The idea of acquiring the Cathays House park as an open public space was raised in 1858 and again in 1875. In 1887 it was suggested the park could commemorate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. Negotiations did not begin until 1892, when Lord Bute agreed to sell 38 acres for £120,000 (equivalent to £ in ). The idea of relocating the Town Hall to the park was controversial, but it was also proposed to locate a new University College building there.
On 14 December 1898, the local council bought the entire of land for £161,000 from the Marquess of Bute (equivalent to £ in ). As part of the sale, the 3rd Marquis of Bute placed strict conditions on how the land was to be developed. The area was to be used for civic, cultural and educational purposes, and the avenues were to be preserved.
A six-month Cardiff Fine Arts, Industrial and Maritime Exhibition which included specially constructed boating lake, a wooden cycling track and an electric railway was held in 1896.
The four-storey maximum rule which was imposed by the local authority to ensure that no building in Cathays Park overshadowed the City Hall was removed. This led to the third phase of building from the 1960s, which although built in Portland stone as with the rest of the buildings in Cathays Park, was in a modernist architectural style. These included the seven-storey Biosciences building, in 1967, the twelve storey Tower building. Other buildings constructed included the Redwood Building for the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology, Cardiff Central police station, Law Building and Cathays Park 2.
At the start of the first phase in 1897 a competition was held for a complex comprising Law Courts and a Town Hall, with Alfred Waterhouse, architect of the Natural History Museum in London, as judge. The winners were the firm of Lanchester, Stewart and Rickards, who would later go on to design the Methodist Central Hall in Westminster. These were the first two buildings of the ensemble, and have an almost uniform façade treatment. The east and west of both façades are identical in design, except for the attic storeys, which are decorated with allegorical sculptural groups. On the Crown Court these are Science and Industry, sculpted by Donald McGill, and Commerce and Industry, by Paul Raphael Montford, while on the City Hall are Music and Poetry by Paul Montford and Unity and Patriotism by Henry Poole. The courts and the town hall were followed by the main building of the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire (now Cardiff University), designed by W. D. Caröe and completed in 1905.
The third plot on the site facing City Hall lawn went empty until 1910, when the competition for a National Museum of Wales was won by the architects Arnold Dunbar Smith and Cecil Brewer. The design parts from the Edwardian Baroque of the Law Courts and City Hall and is more akin to American Beaux-Arts architecture, particularly in the entrance hall where a similarity to McKim, Mead and White's later Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has been noted. The Museum site was not bounded to the north by an avenue so there were scarcely any limits on the depth of the building; the 1910 plan was almost twice as deep as it was broad.
p. 226 The First World War, however, ensured that progress on the building was very slow. By 1927 part of the East range, with the lecture theatre funded by William Reardon Smith, was complete. p. 226 Further extensions came only in the 1960s and 1990s; these remained faithful to the original design on the exterior (and included sculpture by Dhruva Mistry) but are of a neutral character on the inside. p. 228The final plots in the north of the park were occupied by government offices and university departments. The foundations for a governmental office block were laid in 1914, but work ceased almost immediately due to World War I. Construction of the Crown Buildings (now Cathays Park 1) was undertaken between 1932-38, initially as a headquarters for the Welsh Board of Health. This was followed in the 1970s by Cathays Park 2, a vast administrative block for the Welsh Office. Although the architect and town planner, John B. Hilling, in his study Black Gold, White City: The History and Architecture of Cardiff Civic Centre published in 2016, acknowledged the architects' efforts to respect Cathays Park 2's surroundings, by use of a symmetrical plan laid out on a clear axis, the building's Brutalist style has been much criticised. Both Hilling and the architectural historian John Newman quote the judgement of the Architects' Journal; "a perversely appropriate symbol of closed inaccessible government" suggesting a bureaucracy under siege".
p. 166 p. 233 Cathays Park 1 and 2 have seen 'Cathays Park' become used as a Metonymy, firstly for the Welsh Office, and after devolution in 1999, for the Welsh Government's civil servants and ministerial offices.The last plot on the site was occupied by the University of Wales, which constructed a series of university departments, laboratories and schools on the site from the 1950s to the very early 21st century. The development has been criticised as being too dense, the university's appetite for accommodation outdoing the limitations of the site. Dewi-Prys Thomas, the first professor of architecture at the University of Wales, expressed dismay at, "the injury done to the Civic Centre, with the colossal pile of buildings thrusting up against the main University College."
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| Aberdare Hall ! | 1895 | |||
| Martin Evans Building and Tower Building | / Percy Thomas Partnership | 1968 | ||
| Black Box | 1966 (demolished 1992) | |||
| Bute Building ! | and Ivor Jones | 1916 | ||
| Cardiff Central Police Station | 1968 | |||
| Cardiff Crown Court ! | Lanchester, Stewart and Rickards | 1906 | ||
| Law Building | Percy Thomas Partnership | 1963 | ||
| Cardiff University main building ! | 1905 | |||
| City Hall ! | Lanchester, Stewart and Rickards | 1906 | ||
| Cathays Park 1 (part of the Crown Buildings complex) ! | 1938 | |||
| Cathays Park 2 (part of the Crown Buildings complex) | 1979 | |||
| Glamorgan Building (former Glamorgan building) ! | and Thomas Anderson Moodie | 1912 | ||
| Hut in Gorsedd Gardens ! | Not known | Not known | ||
| Music Building | 1971 | |||
| National Museum and Gallery of Wales ! | and Cecil Brewer | 1927 | ||
| Public conveniences on Museum Avenue ! | Cardiff City Council's architect’s department | Early 1930s | ||
| Redwood Building (Welsh School of Pharmacy) | 1961 | |||
| Temple of Peace ! | 1938 | |||
| University of Wales, Registry ! | 1904 (Enlarged 1933 by T Alwyn Lloyd) | |||
| Welsh National War Memorial ! | 1928 | |||
The Gorsedd Gardens also contain a "tree of life" planted on World AIDS Day, 1 December 1994, to commemorate "all those who have lost their lives to AIDS in Wales". The original plaque was replaced at the 2021 World AIDS Day commemoration event. The tree is the focus for yearly World AIDS Day commemorations, with people attaching to the tree. The tree was also the location of Cardiff's vigil after the murder of Brianna Ghey in February 2022.
It contains a statue constructed in honour of the 3rd Marquess of Bute by James Pittendrigh Macgillivray and erected in 1928. A gardeners' hut in the gardens has been converted to a coffee outlet. The gardens were originally part of Greyfriars and was sometimes known as a Priory or a Friary as it was a Franciscans. The friary is believed to have been founded by the Grey Friars around 1280. The Greyfriars were also known as the Friars Minor and the Franciscans. Greyfriars was demolished by order of Henry VIII in approximately 1540 as part of the dissolution of the monasteries.
Parc Mackenzie, which lies between the University of Wales main block and the National Museum, is the newest area of green space to be created within the park. Opened in 2023, it commemorates Millicent Mackenzie (1863–1942), the first woman professor in Wales. At the Alexandra Gardens end of the Parc Mackenzie plot stands a Grade II listed public convenience. Long disused and derelict, in 2024 planning permission was granted for its conversion into a cafe.
The City Hall Lawns have a low pool with a triple spout fountain which faces the City Hall. The fountains were created to mark the investiture of Prince Charles as Prince of Wales in July 1969.Cardiff Council City Hall Cardiff: Visitor Information Guide Second edition, 2006 The lawns are used for temporary events, such as Cardiff's annual Winter Wonderland and previously as part of the Cardiff Big Weekend.
The Crown Gardens were formal gardens located to the north of the old Crown Buildings, now called Cathays Park I. The Gardens were built over from 1972 through to 1979 which became the new Crown Buildings, now called Cathays Park II.
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| Statue of Third Marquess of Bute | ! | |||
| Statue of John Cory | 1906 ! | |||
| Statue of Lord Aberdare | 1898 ! | |||
| Statue of Lord Ninian Edward Crichton Stuart | 1917 ! | |||
| Statue of David Lloyd George | Michael Rizzello | 1960 ! | ||
| Statue of Godfrey, First Viscount Tredegar | 1909 ! | |||
| Statue of Judge Gwilym Williams of Miskin | ! | |||
| South African War Memorial also known as the Boer War Memorial | 1909 ! | |||
| Statue of Girl in Gorsedd Gardens | Robert Thomas | 2005 | ||
| Three Obliques (Walk In) Sculpture in forecourt of the Music Building | Barbara Hepworth | 1968 ! | ||
| Relief Sculpture on Redwood Building | Edward Bainbridge Copnall | 1961 | ||
| Mind's Eye Relief sculpture on the Tower lecture theatre | Peter Randall-Page | 20062007 | ||
| Forecourt Walls to University of Wales Main Block ! | ||
| Colonnade and gateways at south end of Queen Anne Square ! | ||
| Pair of Obelisk Lamp Stands to west of City Hall Pair of Obelisk Lamp Stands to south west of City Hall Pair of Obelisk Lamp Stands to south east of City Hall Pair of Obelisk Lamp Stands to south west of Crown Court Pair of Obelisk Lamp Stands to south east of Crown Court ! | ||
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Cathays Park on the Cardiff Council website
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Cathays Park Conservation Area
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