Historical background
A market town and holiday resort which now forms a sub-regional
centre for southern Gwynedd. Its origins appear to lie with
its parish church, and as the name ‘Tywyn' (sea-shore or sand-dune)
suggests, it is probable that when it was founded it was near
the water's edge. It may have been the principal ecclesiastical
centre of the south-western part of Gwynedd. A villa de Tewyn
is recorded in 1283, implying the beginnings of urban life
but it was never a planted borough town and seems to have evolved
around the church. The market seems to have grown up around
the church and Corbett Square . Visitors record uniformly negative
judgements of the place until the early nineteenth century,
when it began to expand under the patronage of the Corbet (and
from 1878 the Corbett) family of Ynysymaengwyn. From the 1860s
it was served by the national rail network, and boasted civic
infrastructure in the form of gas supply. By this stage it
had pretensions to becoming a holiday resort, and boarding
houses were springing up.
The purchase of the Ynysymaengwyn estate by John Corbett in
1878 led to further investment in the town, including the development
of the water and sewage system, the building of the promenade,
the assembly room of 1893 (now the cinema), the Intermediate
School of 1894 and the market hall of 1897. The High Street
was developed slowly from the 1860s to the 1960s, and villa-type
housing made its appearance particularly in the southern part
of the town.
From August 1941 and May 1945 an RAF camp was established
at Tywyn, taken over by the army at the end of the war. The
runways have disappeared but many of the buildings are extant,
as are services personnel married quarters, semi-detached dwellings
to the north of the camp, now in private hands.
The revival of the Talyllyn Railway in 1951 placed Tywyn on
the tourist map once again. The town acquired a supermarket
on the site of the former main-line goods yard in the late
twentieth century, a hospital, a leisure centre and an industrial
estate on the road near Pendre. A proposal for a marina sea-front
development was turned down but there has been considerable
new build on the Promenade area.
Key historic landscape characteristics
Tywyn is a town of some architectural variety, and in which
different street patterns are evident. The historic core of
the town is characterised by small two-storey houses of possibly
eighteenth century or early nineteenth century date as well
as some larger double-fronted structures in the vicinity of
the church and the market place. The church itself, with its
twelfth century nave and Victorian transept, chancel and tower,
is recognisably the historic centre of this part of the settlement,
and its tower is visible for some distance away. However, the
substantial Corbett Arms Hotel closes off the historic market
area and dominates this part of the town. Some of the buildings
facing the church are unoccupied, including Geufron House with
its attractive Italianate triple window.
Away from this area, the architecture varies considerably.
Along High Street, which extends from the Medieval core westwards,
double-fronted dwellings of Hanoverian proportions can be seen
near to mid- nineteenth
century terraced dwellings and a brick-built bon marché, Paige's
Furnishings of 1903. The Victorian and Edwardian ambience of
the western end of High Street is however dented by a modernist
leisure centre. A cluster of nineteenth century boarding houses
‘Idris Villas' and on Pier Road make use of polychromatic brick
patterns. Around Tywyn Wharf station, at the intersection of
Station Road/Brynhyfryd Road and Neptune Road , the buildings
are later, more elaborately ‘villa' in style and apt to make
greater use of brick.
There are extensive areas of twentieth-century housing in
the town.
The sea front buildings (in the area between the main line
railway and the promenade) include some pre- railway stone-built
vernacular dwellings of perhaps eighteenth century date, and
some substantial nineteenth century hotels and apartment blocks,
but dwellings are mostly post-war ‘infill', bungalows and housing
estates. The apartment block ‘Trem Enlli' is particularly impressive,
and preserves some of its original detailing in the form of
wrought ironwork and attractive timber balconies.
This area includes the twentieth-century military camps at
Tywyn.
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Landscape Character Map
