Cathays Park judges Cathays Park to be "the finest civic centre in the British Isles". The area falls within the Cathays electoral ward. Cathays Park was formerly part of Cardiff Castle grounds. The present day character of the area owes much to successive holders of the title the Marquess of Bute, and especially the 3rd Marquess of Bute, an extremely successful and wealthy businessman. They acquired much of the lands in Cathays through investment and by inheritance through a marriage to Charlotte Windsor in 1766. In 1898, the local council bought of land from the 3rd Marquess of Bute to erect a
Fairwater, Cardiff and numerous playing fields. Fairwater is the historic name of one of the canons' stalls at nearby Llandaff Cathedral. Fairwater has two secondary schools. The larger of the two, with over a thousand pupils, is the Welsh-medium Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Plasmawr. The other is Cantonian High School, which has nearly 700 pupils. The building in which Plasmawr stands was originally opened in 1959 as Waterhall Secondary Modern School. Pupils at the school included Martyn Woodroffe an Olympic swimming Silver Medalist in 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico. It is on the grounds of old Cantonian lower school, but in recent times