The Cambrian Hotel (later the Grand Hotel) was built in 1864-70 by Thomas Savin, who also built Borth Rail Station, with the consultation of J. P. Seddon. An advertisement for the hotel in 1871 noted that it had `10 Private Sitting Rooms, 42 Bed Rooms, extensive Cellaring, detached Laundry, Stabling, Coach-houses and other requisite Out-buildings, and also a large Bowling Green and Croquet Lawn?. During the Second World War the building housed evacuated students and in 1947 the building was renamed Pantyfedwen and presented to the Urdd Gobaith Cymru as a gift on their Silver Jubilee.

The building was a large stucco three-and-a-half-storey, nine-bay structure with large, high chimneys. The front of the building, facing the sea, had six small single-light gabled dormers, three on each side of a large, three-bay and three-light pedimented dormer in the centre. The front also had large two-storey canted bay windows to right and left (in the second and eighth bays) as well as a central two-story canted oriel widow over a small doorway. The main entrance was in the southern wall of the main wing of the building, and thus on the approach from the rail station. The entrance was in a large porch, reached by a short stair, with two round arched openings to the south and one arched opening each in the west and eastern walls. Behind the main wing were two rear wings on the north and south which surrounded a single-storey outbuilding behind which were the gardens (Nprn 86775).

The 25-inch 1904 map and a plan dated 1925 showed a very small 'gasometer' and an associated rectangular building which was probably the gas house. A gasometer was marked until the 1948 OS map. Ownership of the gasworks and when it was constructed are uncertain, but it is assumed that it was associated with the Cambrian Hotel, as they were within the grounds of the Hotel. An article in the Cambrian News (27th May 1881) suggests the gasworks may have been a public enterprise “He was also fond of Borth, and he trusted now that the waterworks had been constructed, that the only other want should be supplied, he meant gas-works. He hoped he should have the happiness of seeing the Chairman there twelve months hence inaugurating the Borth gasworks.”. The waterworks were established by the Aberystwyth Rural Sanitary Authority, so they may have established the gasworks in 1882. The Aberystwith Observer from the 1st June 1889 described that “The house is lit throughout by oil-gas, the works for the production of which are on the grounds.”.

The hotel building was demolished in 1976 in order to make way for luxury flats and maisonettes. Although the original plan was to retain and preserve the entrance porch of the hotel in the new build this has unfortunately not survived.

(Sources: Welsh Newspapers Online: Aberystwyth Observer, 14.10.1871; NMR Site Files, Cardiganshire, Domestic, SN69SW; Lloyd, Orbach, and Scourfield, The Buildings of Wales: Carmarthen and Ceredigion (London: 2006), pp. 438-439)
A.N. Coward, RCAHMW, 04.05.2018