Historical background
A built-up area which extends over the slopes of Mynydd Pant,
and over the low-lying area at the foot of the Little Orme/Mynydd
Pant/Nant y Gamar ridge (area 3). Although several different
building characters and periods are evident, having developed
from separate foci, their boundaries have become merged.
The Medieval focus is Penrhyn Old Hall at the foot of the
ridge, described as ‘ancient' by Leland in 1536-9, the home
of the recusant Pugh family. A museum of Welsh curios was established
here in 1910, and by 1987 it had become a night-club. It now
functions as a pub-restaurant. The chapel attached to it, which
dates from the sixteenth century, was restored for religious
purposes c.1930, but has since become derelict.
The settlement on Mynydd Pant evolves from a nineteenth century
quarry workers' community, constructed for the limestone quarry
on the Little Orme - sixteen two-up two-down dwellings were
erected on Maesgwm Road , near the ridge for the quarrymen
and their families in the period 1894 to 1900. These survive
and the community appears to have developed in the area downslope
from here. This area is characterised by two-storey double-fronted
houses, larger than most quarrymen's houses yet smaller than
most middle-class dwellings of the period. These are for the
most part limestone-built and slate-roofed and are laid out
along small winding lanes which preserve their original Welsh
names. A post-office and three chapels, one Baptist and two
Calvinist, were noted.
More recent developments in this area include post-war housing
on the lower slopes which unites it with the settlement on
the alluvial flatlands. Apart from Penrhyn Old Hall itself
and a small number of nineteenth century buildings, this is
entirely twentieth century in character, and grew up along
the tracks of the Llandudno and Colwyn Bay Electric Railway,
opened in 1907.
No trace was noted of the original wooden and corrugated iron
bungalows constructed on the main road and on Morfa Road in 1920.
Surviving buildings illustrate the varieties of suburban architecture
available from the mid-1920s onwards, and include at least one
attempt at 1930s Modernism. Though roofing material is for the
most part red tile, a distinctive feature is the occasional use
of green slate, probably of Lake District origin rather than
Arfon. These are laid out along broad straight roads. There is
a variety of retail outlets and places of worship, all of mid-
to late-twentieth century construction, within this part of the
character area.
Key historic landscape characteristics
Vernacular settlement, suburban development
A landscape in which the Medieval phase associated with the
surviving Penrhyn Old Hall and its associated chapel, has been
obscured by two distinctive but inter-related areas of settlement,
one representing the last phase of vernacular organic settlement,
the other entirely suburban.
Back to Creuddyn
and Arllechwedd Landscape Character Map
