Historical background
A nineteenth-century village which takes its name from the
point where the Llandwrog to Moel Tryfan road (Lôn Cefn Glyn)
crosses the Porthmadog to Caernarfon road and the Nantlle railway
and its successors. The earliest buildings appear to have been
a smithy and a public house/railway station, established in
the 1840s or ‘50s, shortly followed by other buildings along
the road. In the 1870s and 1880s more substantial buildings
were constructed according to the specification of the Newborough
estate, mainly on the Lôn Cefn Glyn.
Key historic landscape characteristics
Settlement, railway junction
The earlier buildings are largely stone-built. The later ones
include some brickwork, variously yellow, red or polychromatic,
either as quoins or as chimneys or in some cases as the major
building material. Particularly marked are the impressive late
nineteenth-century yellow-brick shops, ‘Gladstone House' and
‘Rathbone House' (SH47495586). The work of the Dolydd-based
architectural practice is evident here in the later nineteenth-century
buildings. There has been considerable modern estate development.
The construction of the by-pass (scheduled for completion late
2001) will relieve the present main road of much of its traffic.
Back to Caernarfon-Nantlle
Landscape Character Map
