Historical background
A gentry-sponsored estate village, dominated by its large
Victorian church, built on the site of an early Christian foundation.
The Ty'n Llan (Harp) hotel appears to date from the early nineteenth
century, and follows the distinctive local hotel pattern, also
exemplified on a much larger scale at the Oakeley Arms, Maentwrog,
of a main range from which three parallel ranges extend towards
the street. The row of tai uncorn on the road from Llandwrog
to the main Caernarfon to Pwllheli road are believed to have
been constructed in the early nineteenth-century, possibly
after the second Lord Newborough assumed his majority in 1823,
but the most other buildings, including the large Kennedy-designed
church of 1860, are later.
Key historic landscape characteristics
Planned settlement, with distinctive tai uncorn and cottage
ornée styles
The village is built around the large Kennedy-designed church
of 1860, and appears to have housed Glynllifon estate staff
and pensioned servants. The almshouses and public house shows
marked 'polite' influence, and the row of tai uncorn (one-chimney
houses) is typical of Glynllifon architecture; an adaptation
of a renaissance gentry design, deriving in Welsh
terms from Bachegraig, as a cottage ornée, with deliberate
rustic features and grouped together in a row. Recent housing
developments have increased the size of the village to the
west. The village has a distinctly non-Welsh feel to it, not
least in the absence of a nonconformist chapel, though ironically
it has become a stronghold of Welsh nationalism .
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Landscape Character Map
