Pargeting: Harriet Street, Cogan

Firstly, in case you're unfamiliar with the term, pargeting (or pargetting) is the name given to the decorative plasterwork you often see on the facades of older houses. I spotted this particular example on a house in the Penarth suburb of Cogan, about a mile or so from where I live, and it has me mystified.
 

The first houses in Cogan were built in the 1860s to house the workers who were constructing and later working at Penarth docks, back in the days when the mining and exporting of coal was the dominant industry in south Wales. They are mostly small two-storey terraced houses that line both sides of Cogan's oldest streets but the house with the pargeting is different from the others (see photograph above; the house is at the right). 

These days the building is used by a variety of community based businesses, and perhaps that was always its function, but it's the medallion at the centre of the pargeting that is most intriguing. (In the street photograph, which dates from 2022, the medallion was painted black but it has since been repainted white.) 

The medallion looks like a coin, the portrait appears to be that of King Edward VII, and the inscription that encircles the bust is the same as that found on coins minted during Edward's reign, between 1901 and 1910. The Latin 'EDWARDUS VII DEI GRA: BRITT: OMN: REX FID: DEF: IND: IMP' translates to 'Edward the Seventh, by the Grace of God, King of all the Britains, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India'. (You can see an example of a well-worn penny from that time on the Windows on Warwickshire website and a pristine example on a page of the Elysees Numismatique website.) 

The use of a coin image in the decorative pargeting makes me wonder if the building once had a financial function, as a bank perhaps, but unfortunately I've been unable to uncover any details of the building's history so, for now, it remains a mystery.

** Updated 20 January 2026

Thanks to a message from local author David Ings, for which I am exceedingly grateful, I now know that this building was originally Cogan's Reading Room. I found the following brief notice in the Barry Dock News of 7 November 1902 about the building's opening:

COGAN NEW PUBLIC READING ROOM.-A new reading-room which has been built in the centre of Cogan by the Penarth Urban District Council, at a cost of £640, was opened to the public on Saturday last. The opening ceremony was performed by Mr S. Thomas, J.P. Mr Thomas gave a review of library work, after which he was presented with a gold key, by the contractor, Mr J. Pickford. Mr Thomas then declared the room open to the public. Subsequently a luncheon was provided at Cogan Schools.

I also found a photograph (on Pinterest, which links to a Tumblr page) showing a number of men, apparently queuing at the 1902 opening. The image appears to have been sourced from the People's Collection Wales website but PCW has a terrible search system and I've failed to find the original. Unfortunately, the photo  doesn't show the entire building so we can't see whether the medallion centrepiece is an original feature but the facade has obviously been altered at some stage as the words 'READING ROOM' can be seen in the photograph.