Historical background

The bulk of the land which formed the parishes of Aber and Llanfairfechan was acquired by the Bulkeley family of Baron Hill in the sixteenth century, who remained the owners of most of Llanfairfechan until 1856, when they were forced to sell up to one Richard Luck, a solicitor; together with the Platts of Bryn y Neuadd (see 2013 below), Llanfairfechan was transformed by the rebuilding of the plasdai, by the re-alignment of the road, by the construction of boarding houses, an English church, a railway station - though a plan to build docks and piers came to nothing.

Key historic landscape characteristics 

Planned resort town, esplanade and shops, Art-and-Crafts style

Llanfairfechan is similar to Llandudno as a planned estate townscape which incorporates an earlier nucleus which retains a separate character and identity. It is dominated by its main axes, which run south-west to north east. These are the post-road (the former A55), the modern by-pass to the north and the main line railway. The road which runs from the post-road here to the beach is lined by attractive, though down-at-heel, shop buildings, Arts-and-Crafts influenced, and by substantial nineteenth century dwellings with large gardens, leading to a typical Welsh esplanade development consisting of a row of boarding houses, a cafe on the beach, and a model yacht pond. The turreted stone building here, ‘Moranedd', with its patterned slate roof, is an attractive feature. The substantial three-aisle Anglican church by the post-road is a prominent landmark.

Pentre Uchaf is the focus of the pre-Platt community, being made up largely of earlier nineteenth century buildings, including agricultural or small-scale craft buildings in an amongst later dwellings. The bridge here bears the date 1819 on the plaque. Towards the south-west of Pentre Uchaf at SH 683 743 is twentieth century social housing, and to the east at SH 684 749 is a looped development by Herbert Luck North (1871-1941), an outstanding locally-based Arts-and-Crafts architect. The houses are laid out entirely with his distinctive, whitewashed, making use of Arfon slate slabs for boundary fencing and the distinctive brown-green Tal y Fan Quarry slates as roofing material. Other examples are to be found elsewhere in Pentre Uchaf.

Other buildings make extensive use of Penmaenmawr stone. A distinctive feature is the use of yellow brick cornerstones in conformation with Penmaenmawr stone.

 

 

 

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