The Gogerddan Arms was regarded as the town's oldest hotel. Associated with the locally pre-eminent gentry family of Gogerddan, the inn was already notable in the1730s. In the eighteenth century the Court Leet and Quarter Sessions were sometimes held here and the yard was the setting for nonconformist services. In the early nineteenth century it was the second best hotel in town.
The inn had extended into an adjoining property by 1848 and a billiard room and concert room were being constructed in 1869. More recently the building served as 'Padarn Hall', a university halls of residence, before in about 1990 it was gutted and fitted out as retail premises. The external elevations have been retained, but on their own carry little of the buildings essential character.
The building is described as it was prior to its gutting.
The inn occupies a roughly square corner plot on Wood's plan of 1834, corresponding to the symmetrical western end of the present Darkgate facade. This is a early nineteenth century style late Georgian composition, five bays with a central doorway behind a (modern replacement) porch, rising three storeys to a slate gabled roof. This facade is thought to mask a U plan eighteenth century building set around three sides of a court. There are cellars below the north-west corner and south-east range. The range closing the yard to the south, of three storeys over a cellar, is an addition, apparently prior to 1834.
The Darkgate Street facade extends over the two adjoining plots shown on the 1834 map, probably subsumed between then and 1848. They have been given a similar treatment to the original facade, although they are slighly stepped down and are arranged in two two bay facades. To the rear is the hipped roofed dining room block which may be the concert hall of 1869, apparently formed out of an earlier building, possibly a stable. The adjoining kitchen has a decorative tiled floor and may be the 1869 billiard room.
At some time in the mid nineteenth century the building's disparate facades were given a unified treatment, scribed stucco above a rusticated ground floor. The rear facades are stone rubble or brick.

Sources: NMR Site File
CADW Listed Buildings Database (10245)

John Wiles 21.09.07