Maeshafn Youth Hostel was the first purpose built hostel in Britain, designed by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis (1883–1978) and completed in 1931. Costing £900 and known as the Holt Hostel in honour of the Holt shipping family of Liverpool who funded its construction. Grade II listed on account of its historical and architectural interest. Description from Duncan M. Simpson: ‘the simple wooden structure of unusual design made an immediate statement. It aligned youth hostels with modern architecture, in a colourful style, linked to the Arts and Crafts movement and to Clough Williams-Ellis’ ambitions. The building was Italianate and Mediterranean. Blue doors in the yellow walls of a central common room opened into two dormitories, one for men on the south side and one for women, on the north side. He divided each dormitory into four cubicles for cosiness and suspended stout canvas bunks in the cubicles. His design was as far from the large, purpose-built hostels of Germany as it was possible to be. His hostel was small where those of Germany were big […] The youth hostel at Maeshafn was, over time, messed around with and altered, had a balcony added and taken away. Its windows were replaced and its shutters removed. A room was added as the hostel struggled to adapt to change and demand until it closed and was sold in 2006. As the first purpose-built hostel in Britain, it marked an important milestone in the first years of youth hostels and, at the time, was a hopeful sign of the kind of hostels the association planned to build. Others followed showing that fashionable architects and good, colourful design and architecture are not new to youth hostels.’ 

RCAHMW. May 2021.

Sources:

Duncan M. Simpson, 'Hostels, Villas and Clough Williams-Ellis', Simply Hostels
Jonathan Vining and Malcolm Parry, Wales 1901-2000, p.10