Ty?n-y-coed is a superbly built Victorian villa on a terraced site. David Davis Junior, of the Ferndale Collieries, Glamorgan, commissioned it around 1875 from the Cardiff contractor and architect William Parry James. James was assisted by Edwin Seward, the aesthetic architect of later nineteenth century Cardiff, who joined James in 1875 at the age of twenty-two.

The house is constructed from green stone with grey dressings, and is built in a symmetrical form with a spired lantern on the ridge. The canted-ended wings have fantastically bargeboarded dormers that frame the centre behind an arcaded loggia with Ruskinian naturalistic capitals. The double-height hall with dining and drawing rooms has a morning room on the right and a kitchen on the left, and a basement servants? hall below. The main rooms have panelled dados, pine-ribbed ceilings, and doors with brass fittings, but it is the polychromy of chimneypieces and staircase that startles, showing very early the influence of William Burges's Cardiff Castle.

The hall is spectacular. The ashlar stair walls have a stepped chequer of grey from the ends of the stair treads and are carried on pink marble arches. The balustrade opulently combines marble, wrought iron and Bath stone, the column newels topped by lustrous half-spheres of white marble. This enthusiasm for materials characterizes the enormous fireplace and overmantel: coloured marbles and stone, with embossed glazed tiles under Gothic leaf carving. Similar unrestrained colour and materials in the dining-room chimneypiece and sideboard recess, and the drawing-room and morning-room chimneypieces. The splendid sideboard and other woodwork was apparently made in Manchester. Encaustic tiles in the landing panelling are by Minton, two series, Shakespeare and naughty imps.

Source: Haslam, Orbach and Voelcker (2009), The Buildings of Wales: Gwynedd. Pevsner Architectural Guide, page 544.

RCAHMW, October 2009