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 under the Freedom of Information Act show that over 70% of the houses in Cathays are now HMOs. The buy-to-let market has deterred young couples, families and first time buyers from setting up home in the area. Cathays High School is an 11-18 mixed comprehensive school that started as a boys Grammar school in 1903 and became a comprehensive high school in 1973. Despite the urbanisation of Cathays there is extensive parkland around the civic centre, including Gorsedd Gardens, Queen Alexandra Gardens, Bute Park and Blackweir. The area is served by Cathays railway station in the east of the area