Cylchgronau Cymru

Teify-Side 6ntiquities. 4.-THE THREE MARINERS INN, CARDIGAN. 7W VISITOR walking through the main street of Cardigan would not think of giving a second glance at the Three Mariners Inn, if indeed its humble and somewhat unkempt looking frontage were to catch his eye at all. Yet behind the utterly commonplace plaster front, there still linger, through a strange freak of fate, some of the choicest treasures the County possesses in the way of domestic architecture. On ascending the dark and narrow stair one emerges from the rather sordid surroundings of a modern Welsh public house with its comfortless bar, reeking of stale beer and strong tobacco, into the atmosphere of refined taste belonging to a town mansion of the 17th century. One of the rooms on the first floor boasts a ceiling, whose heavy beams are overlaid with plaster ornament such as is without a rival in the old houses of the County. The lower surface of the beams has a broad and rich band of conventional foliage and fruit attached, though unfortunately, portions of the plaster have fallen, so that some of the beams show a plain surface: yet enough remains intact to exhibit the great beauty of the design. A large oval wreath of scaly pattern, which gives beautiful play of light and shade, occupies the centre, and a variety of egg-and-dart moulding runs round the cornice. There is a persistent tradition in the Town that it was in this house that Henry of Richmond slept in 1485, on his way from Milford Haven to meet King Richard III. at Bosworth Field. Little of the present structure can be as old as the 15th century, though possibly some of the material of the walls may date so far back, for it is said that I lancet-windows long since filled in and cemented over used to light the uppermost rooms. The ceiling already described, as the I classical' feeling of the ornament shows, clearly belongs to the 17th century, and much of the wood-work of the first-floor is of the same period. Two doors, in particular, show panelling of a simple but effective design of a kind often met with in Jacobean or Caroline wood-work. The interior scheme of reconstruction, of which the beautiful ceiling and these doors formed a part, was probably carried out in the reign of Charles II., though, if we were to meet with work of a like nature in London, or in some place nearer to the great centres of activity than the Teify-side, we should very likely be right in assigning it to the reign of James I. or Charles I.