Old Shire Hall, Cardigan

The building was commissioned as a courthouse for the county of Cardiganshire, to replace the inadequate judicial facilities in Cardigan Castle.^[2] The site the justices selected, on the west side of the High Street, had been occupied by the Church of the Holy Trinity.^[3]

The shire hall was designed in the neoclassical style, built in rubble masonry with an ashlar stone frontage and was completed in 1764.^[4] The design involved a narrow main frontage facing onto the High Street with long side elevations stretching back behind the main frontage. It featured a two-storey arch formed by two piers with imposts supporting a series of voussoirs and a raised keystone. Above the arch, there was a band which was surmounted by two rectangular attic windows in a recess. At roof level, there was a frieze, a cornice and a parapet, and there was originally also a small bell turret. Internally, there was a corn exchange on the ground floor and a courtroom on the first floor.^[1]

The courtroom was used twice year for the quarter sessions, which were also held once a year at Aberystwyth Town Hall and at the Lampeter Town Hall.^[5][6][7] The building was enlarged to create a room for the grand jury in 1829.^[8]

The courtroom ceased to be used for judicial purposes once Cardigan Guildhall was completed in 1860,^[2] and the use of the ground floor as a corn exchange declined significantly in the wake of the Great depression of British agriculture in the late 19th century.^[9] The building was therefore sold for commercial use: it served as a garage and motor repair shop, operated by S. T. Jones, from 1926 to 1947,^[10] and then served as a furniture shop operated by a firm of drapers, David Jones Watts.^[11] It was later used as a warehouse and then as a bookshop, known as Bookend.^[12] Since 2015, it has served as a charity shop for the British Red Cross.^[13][14]

• Grade II* listed buildings in Ceredigion