Cathays Cathays Cathays ( ; (Welsh: usually "Cathays" but also "Y Waun Ddyfal") is a district and community in the centre of Cardiff, capital of Wales. It is an old suburb of Cardiff established in 1875. It is very densely populated and contains many older terraced houses giving it a Victorian era atmosphere. The area falls into the Cathays ward. The name is likely to be 'hedges/enclosure where there are wildcats' from Middle English cat(t), connoting possibly given the semi-agricultural, semi-forest nature of the area at the time wildcat rather than domesticated cats, and the plural form of hague/hay, meaning 'enclosure',
Cathays Park 1927 part of the East range, with the lecture theatre funded by William Reardon Smith, was complete. Further extensions came only in the 1960s and '90s; these remained faithful to the original design on the exterior (and included sculpture by Dhruva Mistry) but are of a neutral character on the inside. Due to presence of the then Welsh Office building, by the 1990s 'Cathays Park' became a metonym for that Government Department. In addition to the large lawn in front of the City Hall, Cathays Park includes three formal gardens. All of the spaces are within conservation areas and many