Qualla: Alban Square, Aberaeron

Alban Square, Aberaeron: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stephen McKay, CC BY-SA 2.0. Edward Haycock Senior practised most of his career out of Shrewsbury, in Shropshire. He worked across the Welsh borders and through south Wales, designing country houses and churches and the occasional gaol. In 1830, Colonel A. T. J. Gwynne hired him to draw a grid plan for the new town of Aberaeron, which the Colonel's late father had begun developing on the Ceredigion coast a quarter of a century before. Haycock drew the grid. He drew the principal square at its centre, the premier plot. Leases on the houses were sold from the early 1830s onwards. The square was named for the elder Gwynne - Alban Thomas Jones Gwynne - and is named for him still, two centuries later, a quiet grass rectangle with painted terraces facing each other across the green.

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Image: Stephen McKay | CC BY-SA 2.0

Alban Square, Aberaeron: A Planned Square in Rural Wales

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jason.nlw, CC BY-SA 3.0. Aberaeron is a rare thing in Wales: a town that was planned. Most Welsh settlements grew organically around a castle, a chapel, a crossroads, a mineral seam. The deliberate Regency plan with a central residential square, well known from the great Georgian developments of Bath or ...

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Image: Jason.nlw | CC BY-SA 3.0

Alban Square, Aberaeron: Twelve Houses, Three Sides

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The Red Fairy, CC BY-SA 4.0. Numbers 9 to 20 form the eastern side of the square. Numbers 1 to 8 form the northern side. Numbers 22 to 37 form the western side. The southern side is open. The houses are two storeys, slate-roofed in characteristic Welsh slate, of a simple Regency design that the Pevsner archi...

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Image: The Red Fairy | CC BY-SA 4.0

Alban Square, Aberaeron: The Pastel Question

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jason.nlw, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sometime in the twentieth century, Aberaeron's terraces - including Alban Square - were painted in varying pastel shades. Some are pink. Some are mint green. Some are pale blue, sky blue, butter yellow, lavender. The colour scheme is the single feature of the town that visitors r...

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Image: Jason.nlw | CC BY-SA 3.0

Alban Square, Aberaeron: Grade II*, and the Cadw Verdict

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jason.nlw, CC BY-SA 3.0. Numbers 9 to 20, the houses on the eastern side, carry the Grade II* listing - Cadw's second-highest grade of statutory protection, indicating particularly important buildings of more than special interest. The other sides of the square are Grade II. The Cadw record describes the...

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Image: Jason.nlw | CC BY-SA 3.0