Historical background
This east-west limestone ridge includes the houses Marl and
Bodysgallen, and a letter small nucleated settlement on its
summit. It is characterised by winding lanes and small fields,
and there has been some quarrying.
Key historic landscape characteristics
Small, irregular nineteenth century enclosures and settlement,
winding lanes, hillside quarries, Bodysgallen gardens.
Bryn Pydew is shown on the tithe map as a distinctive area
of relatively small, irregular enclosures each with its individual
house set around winding lanes within the heart of an area
of common. This pattern underlies the current appearance of
the landscape of this area, although all the surrounding land
is now enclosed. The fields, which are now mainly down to pasture
(horses rather than sheep), are characteristically bounded
by hedges (some with trees), although there are some coursed
limestone walls. There are areas of old woodland, especially
on the north-western slopes.
The settlement pattern is chiefly nineteenth century
cottages, with some nucleation around the central ‘village
green' where there is a chapel among the houses, although no
shop or other ‘services'. Modern in-filling has distorted the
original pattern of scattered cottages, and altered much of
the vernacular appearance of the area.
There are no known sites of relict archaeological interest
in the area.
There are a number of quarries dotted along the sides of the
limestone ridge, many overgrown but still significant features.
Their historical significance lies in the fact that they provided
stone for Telford 's bridge across the Conwy.
The patterns of winding lanes and footpaths appear to follow
that established by the mid-nineteenth century: there are no
recent roads or realignments. There is a single World War II
pillbox in the area, looking down the Conwy Valley .
The grade I register park and garden of Bodysgallen (with
exceptional terraced gardens, chiefly eighteenth and nineteenth
century with an earlier core, remarked on Pennant) falls within
the area, as does the significant post-medieval house and land
of Marl . The obelisk on Bodysgallen land is a significant
landscape marker.
Back to Creuddyn
and Arllechwedd Landscape Character Map
