The ribbon nature of the settlement, set along the main road which runs from left (Beddgelert) to right (Caernarfon) across this photograph (looking south west), is clearly visible here. Later settlement has been added to the east of the road which runs along the edge of a drop in to the river valley. The enclosures of area 17 are visible in the foreground.

Historical background

Part of Waun Fawr Treflan, a common where the tenants of Treflan had the right to graze their animals. The present village is a nineteenth-century ribbon development reflecting the development of slate quarrying and also the opening of the North Wales Narrow Gauge Railway in 1878, which made possible the development of a nucleated community. The area is associated with the bard Dafydd Ddu Eryri (David Thomas, 1759-1822), and with John Evans (1770-1799), who explored the source of the Missouri.

 

Key historic landscape characteristics

Enclosure, ribbon settlement 

A largely late nineteenth-century ribbon development along the Caernarfon to Beddgelert road, reconstructed c. 1802, fronting onto an earlier, more dispersed area of settlement (area 17). The lengthy Glyn Afon terrace (SH52395943), constructed in perhaps the 1880s, is stoutly built of coursed stone. Many of the houses preserve ornamental ironwork in the front gardens. The substantial garages and warehouses reflect the village's role in the development of small road haulage firms in the area after 1918, particularly the Whiteways company (SH52315946). The cluster of houses towards the bridge may represent an earlier small nucleation. These include Pen y Bont, the home of Dafydd Ddu Eryri (SH52645909).

 

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