Historical background
A ridge of upland that extends from Conwy Mountain (Mynydd
y Dref) in the north-east to the uplands around Bwlch y Ddeufaen
in the south-west. This area shows evidence of human settlement
from the Bronze Age to the twentieth century.
Immediately to the south east of the Penmaenmawr outcrop lies
a tight knot of ritual/ceremonial monuments with the embanked
stone circle of the Druid's Circle as their centrepiece. The
monuments lie near a purported Bronze Age trackway that traverses
the plateau from the Afon Ddu valley in the west to the Conwy
Valley in the east. Immediately below the plateau, the trackway
bisects a small cemetery of ruined barrows. A second Bronze
Age trackway links Aber and the Conwy Valley via Bwlch y Ddeufaen.
The two trackways are further conjoined by at least two north/south
cross-routes. The most westerly cross-route flanks the cairn
field of Bryniau Bugeilydd, a group of low stone and turf covered
sepulchral mounds. Within the same area there are numerous
unenclosed and enclosed hut groups of round houses in association
with lynchet boundaries and field systems which may be pre-Iron
Age. The road through Bwlch y Ddeufaen was in use in Roman
times, and was still a through route until the late eighteenth
century.
The Iron Age is represented by the hillfort at Castell Caer
Lleion on Conwy Mountain .
Upland land use in the Medieval and Modern periods is associated
with the seasonal movement of stock from the lowlands in winter
to the higher pastures in summer. There is also evidence for
peat-extraction, and small-scale quarrying of diorite, as at
Penmaenbach from c. 1873 until the 1940s, millstone on Mynydd
y Dref during the Napoleonic wars, and slate at Tal y Fan,
a remote site of possibly Medieval origin which limped on until
1914 mainly because of H.L. North's use of its distinctive
green-brown roofing slates for his buildings.
Key historic landscape characteristics
Relict archaeology, communication routes
An area of unenclosed upland given over within the medieval
and modern periods to a pastoral economy and to small-scale
mineral extraction. It also constitutes an extremely rich relict
archaeological landscape of prehistory.
Back to Creuddyn
and Arllechwedd Landscape Character Map
