Vicinity of Carneddol
Madryn gatehouse
Llanbedrog
Llanbedrog, single-storey cottages
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Historic background
There is a record of an urn cremation on
rising ground on the north-east side of Llanbedrog, in an area
where early prehistoric activity is concentrated. A cremation
cemetery has been recorded at the Bwlch between Mynydd Tirycwmwd
and Nant Castell. To the north of this character area there
is a standing stone above Nant y Gledrydd, on rising ground
near Madryn.
There is a possible hillfort on a low spur overlooking Cors Geirch
at Tyddyn Bychan, south-west of Rhyd-y-Clafdy and a promontory fort
of the later prehistoric period at Wyddgrug, north of Madryn.
Ceidio
During the middle ages, three free townships extended across the northern
part of this character area. In the north lay Ceidio, a slightly elevated
tract of land at 50-60m OD which projects into the marsh of Cors Geirch
near Garn Boduan and which is constricted in its southern part by the
bogs south of Edern and by Cors Geirch near Mochras. Ceidio had a detached
hamlet in the upland cow pastures near Gwynus at Rhoswyniasa which,
by the fourteenth century had come into the hand of Thomas Brereley.
Ceidio had no mill of its own and milled at Kirgh (Ceirch). The hamlet
of Rhoswyniasa milled at Gwynus. Ceidio had a church in the thirteenth
century. The upper portion and west gable have been rebuilt but the
fifteenth-sixteenth-century trusses have survived.
Bachellaeth
To the south lay Bachellaeth and the three gwelyau of the grandchildren
of Rhys, Einion and Reon. The Gwely Wyrion Einion milled at the lord’s
mill of Ceirch. The gwelyau Wyrion Rhys and Wyrion Reon shared their
own mill at Bachellaeth. Eleven tenants (of substantial means) are
identified across the three gwelyau in the late thirteenth century.
They had 68 cattle but only 6 horses between them, and eleven draught
animals. There were also 47 sheep but most of them (20 sheep) were
in the hand of one individual, Gwyn ap Ririt, who also had the most
cattle.
Llanfihangel Bachellaeth church, at the foot of Carn Saethon on the
north-east side, is recorded in the thirteenth century but the present
structure is of the nineteenth century, perhaps on the core of an known
eighteenth-century church. The present location is not certainly that
of the earlier church and a tradition records a possible site, with
the name ‘Cae Hen Fynwent’, 2km to the north-west.
At the southern end of the character area we encounter the bond township
of Wystnin, with the hamlet of Bachellyn extending into the marsh and
to the south, the small community of Bodwrog, with only two tenant
families in the late thirteenth century.
Madryn and Llanbedrog
It would appear that Madryn, and its two hamlets, with its own two
mills, Madryn and Fochras, was once a freehold in the hands of the
gwelyau Wyrion Ririt and Wyrion Heilin but which escheated to the Crown.
Llanbedrog was a medieval township in the tenure of the Bishop of Bangor.
The community comprised two gwelyau occupied by 27 families working
around 60 acres of arable quillets as shareland. The focus of the community
must have been St. Pedrog’s church at the foot of the rising
ground where the village now stands, and in the shadow of the common
land of Mynydd Tirycwmwd. The church was in existence in the thirteenth
century and was extended at the eastern end in the fifteenth or sixteenth
century. The walls have been repaired and rebuilt extensively and the
windows have been replaced. Nevertheless, the earlier work is still
identifiable. A restoration took place in 1865 and a south-western
tower was added at that time.
The Madryn dynasty has a long history, claiming roots in the eleventh
century in the person of Collwyn ap Tangno, Lord of Eifionydd. The
pedigree is clear enough, from the late fourteenth century, to locate
Ifan ap Rhys, at Madryn, in the early fifteenth century. The range
of Madryn’s associations are wide, marrying into the Castellmarch,
Bryn Euryn in Creuddyn, Bodfel, Plas Du families and the Wynns at Conwy
and so on. Thomas Madryn, High Sheriff of Caernarfon in 1586-7, was
one of the eight men from Llyn, along with Hugh Gwyn Bodfel, who were
held in the Tower of London in opposition to Dudley, Earl of Leicester’s,
schemes in respect of the Forest of Snowdon. Thomas’ great-grandfather
Colonel Thomas Madryn, a royalist at heart during the Civil War but
judiciously taking the Parliamentary side, managed to survive, despite
there being found cases of pistols secreted at his home (he was not
the only one) after the conclusion of hostilities. His second son,
William, succeeded to the estate after his brother Thomas died without
heirs, and sold it to the wealthy solicitor Owen Hughes of Beaumaris.
Geoffrey Pary of Rhydolion, in Neigwl, was a contemporary of Colonel
Thomas Madryn and, in contrast, a stanch Puritan. Parry married Margaret
Hughes who brought with her the inheritance of Cefn Llanfair and Wern
Fawr, two important properties close to each other on reclaimed land
of Cors Geirch. Geoffrey’s Puritan sympathies caused him to name
his son Love-God Parry and the name stuck. Love-God and his son Love
Parry occupied Wern Fawr for a while. However, Love-God’s second
wife brought Penarth into the Parry family. Love Parry the third, who
lived at Penarth, Married Sidney, daughter of the Revd. Robert Lewis,
Chancellor of Bangor. Sidney was the great grand-daughter of Jane,
sister to Owen Hughes of Beaumaris who bought the Madryn estate at
the end of the seventeenth century. Love Parry acquired Madryn through
his wife’s inheritance and removed to Madryn. His daughter Margaret
was to inherit and not only Madryn but Cefn Llanfair, Wern Fawr and
Rhydolion. She married her first cousin Thomas Parry Jones (his father
was John Jones of Llwyn On, Denbigh), who added Parry to his name – Thomas
Parry Jones Parry. His introduction brought new life to the running
of the estate at a time when ‘improvement’ was all the
rage.
One of the initiatives of T P J Parry was the erection of several new
cottages in a hamlet called Pig Street, in the wake of the adjacent
proposals for the enclosure of the common at Mynytho. Hyde Hall calculated
that sixteen new houses had been built in the vicinity, between 1800
and 1810, although lamenting that thatch was prevalent in an area that
should be taking advantage of the seaborne importation of slate.
Nevertheless the Pig Street development was to become the core of the
village which began to grow on the spur overlooking the earlier focus
at St. Pedrog’s church, near the shore, during the nineteenth
century (see Historic Landscape Character, below). Llanbedrog was to
blossom as a tourist destination during the early twentieth century.
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Key historic landscape characteristic
•A rolling landscape transacted by
streams draining towards Cors Geirch with a dramatic backdrop
of igneous hills on the west side.
•Substantial and well-established
farmhouses near the edge of Cors Geirch having associations
with gentry families of the seventeenth century.
•Development of Llanbedrog from a
fishing community to a village based on stone quarrying in
the later nineteenth century and tourism in the twentieth
century; retaining several features of the transition including
late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century single storey
cottages and two-storey houses.
•The development of Llanbedrog as
a tourist resort, focussed on the shoreline around Plas Glyn
y Weddw and its associations with nearby Pwllheli.
•The Madryn estate of ancient origin
and its association with the development of Llanbedrog in
the early nineteenth century.
This character area is bounded by the steeper
slopes of the igneous intrusion from Carn Fadryn to Saethon.
Carneddol, Foel Fawr and Mynydd Tirycwmwd on the west and south-west
sides, by the low marshy ground of Cors Geirch on the east
side, and Edern and Morfa Nefyn on the north side. The land
slopes from south-west to north-east, dropping from 100/150m
to 30m OD at Cors Geirch. Several streams drain from the higher
ground towards the marsh creating an undulating landscape.
The land falls from the higher ground in the
west of the area to the marshland of Cors Geirch in the east.
The surface is undulating and is transacted by numerous streams
which drain in that direction. On occasion, where outcrops
of harder rock occur, gorges are formed as at Nant y Gledrydd
at Madryn. The profiles of Carn Fadryn, Carn Bach, Carn Saethon,
Carneddol and Foel Fawr contribute a dramatic backdrop to the
character area.
Fields are generally large and boundaries are frequently regular, except
in the areas in the immediate vicinity of the scattered farms which dot
the landscape, and in areas of wet marshy ground where their intractable
nature retain the boundaries of smaller irregular plots of an earlier
period. Fields near the village of Llanbedrog are also small and irregular
and some retain the sinuous patterns of earlier arable quillets.
Field boundaries in this area are almost universally clawdd banks except
in the immediate vicinity of the hard rock outcrops, as at Garn Bach,
where dry-stone walls can be seen to cap earlier cloddiau. The clawdd
banks are often capped with gorse or fenced with modern posts and pig-wire.
The area is characterised by a number of substantial farmhouses. Bodgadle
is recorded as early as the fifteenth century. The present house, of
uncoursed rubble on two storeys has an early seventeenth-century core
with a winding stone stair, adjacent to the fireplace, in the thickness
of the west gable wall. Ty’n y Coed, a two-storied house of the
eighteenth century, stands on the edge of the marsh, north-west of Bodgadle.
Again, this house is of rubble, roughly coursed, on boulder footings.
Meillionen, south-east of Ceidio Church is another substantial farmhouse
with seventeenth-century features. Penhyddgan, in Ceidio, stands close
to the edge of the marsh in the shadow of Garn Boduan. This is an important
house of roughly coursed boulders, and large quoins, on two storeys,
of late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century date. There is a projecting
stair tower on the east side and a door in the south wall providing access
to both storeys. The chimney flues at each gable end are within the thickness
of the walls, surmounted by tall brick stacks. Wern Fawr, to the north
of Llanbedrog, and on land reclaimed from the marshy environment, is
included within the character area of Cors Geirch. The two-storied house
has several sixteenth-century features. This and the other house referred
to are all on the fringe of the marshy tract of fenland at Cors Geirch.
The Madryn estate was as well established
as any in this area. The ancient house no longer exists and
its character is unknown. A seventeenth-century gatehouse survived
when the old house was cleared to make way for a mock-baronial,
neo-gothic pile, built sometime after the arrival of T P Jones
Parry at Madryn and called Madryn castle. In the 1960s the
castle was demolished. The somewhat ruinous gatehouse still
stands. The jambs and mullions of the windows have quarter-round
mouldings and drip-moulds.
Llanbedrog
Llanbedrog is the only village in the character area. At the turn of
the twenty-first century the village presents itself as a tourist resort,
particularly with regard to its sheltered beach and opportunities for
sailing, fishing and outdoor pursuits. There are numerous camping,
caravan and chalet accommodation available locally. Llanbedrog, however,
has several facets to its character, each visible in the present landscape.
By 1840 Jones Parry’s Pig Street development had grown to about
thirty buildings; houses and two chapels on the south side of the uphill
road to Mynytho. Over the next forty years this upper part of Llanbedrog
grew slowly. By the 1880s terraced houses had been built at the west
end of Pedrog Street, on the north side of the road; the Calvinistic
Methodist chapel (Peniel) was rebuilt in 1866, together with a substantial
chapel house adjacent and was joined in an elevated position on the rock
of Pen-y-Bryn by the Wesleyan chapel, Reheboth, in 1871 and by the Independent
Capel Seion, in 1883 a little further down the road. All three chapels
had earlier manifestations, although not necessarily on the same site.
The Calvinist Methodists’ first chapel at Llanbedrog was established
exceptionally early in 1791; the Wesleyans in 1832 and the Independents
before 1840.
The Bachellyn Arms public house and the Ship Inn stood at the western
end of Pedrog Street, near the old windmill, by then out of use. Apart
from the relatively new development of 18 houses at Madryn Terrace on
the north side of the road and a small enclave of chapel, chapel house
and four terraced houses at Capel Seion there were no other buildings
on the north side before the small row of single-storey cottages which
stood at the road junction leading down the hill past Bryn y Gro to Llanbedrog
church. The Old Smithy stood at that junction.
At this time the principal occupation across the parish continued to
be farming, labouring and the provision of domestic service, on the farms
and in people’s homes. However, a stone-quarry and sett-making
industry had developed, taking hard rock from the headland of Mynydd
Tirycwmwd. A significant proportion of the population of the village
were occupied in the stone quarries including incomers from Nefyn and
Penmaenmawr, who brought their experience and expertise with them.
Plas Glyn y Weddw was built by the Bangor architect, Henry Kennedy, as
a dower house for Lady Elizabeth Love Jones Parry in the 1850s. The style,
externally and internally is Victorian Gothic. The walls are of irregularly
coursed, squared, brown quarried stone with sandstone quoins, window
frames and mullions. The hallway is open to a cantilevered hammer-beam
roof. A first-floor gallery is approached by a large Jacobean central
staircase. The building was designed to display works of art and in 1896
the hall was sold to a Cardiff entrepreneur, Solomon Andrews, who maintained
it as a venue for cultural events including art. It continues to be accessible
as a gallery and lends considerable character to the context of St. Pedrog’s
church, the picturesque ‘Foxhole’ single storey fishermen’s
cottages and the ‘Cottage’, an eighteenth-century building
added to and developed in the early nineteenth century; all within the
restricted landscape between the shore and the neck of the Mynydd Tirycwmwd
headland. By the 1920s, little had changed in the upper part of Llanbedrog.
Additional development took place at the road junction at the foot of
the hill where the Glyn y Weddw Arms public house stands.
Between 1896 and 1927 a horse tramway operated to bring visitors from
Pwllheli to Llanbedrog. Pwllheli and destinations further south, to Llanbedrog
and Abersoch, were experiencing the first ripples of a tourist boom.
By the end of the twentieth century new housing estates had colonised
Ty’n Pwll and along Lôn Pin, an old road past Henllys and
on to Wern Fawr, north-west of Ffordd Pedrog. More housing has been built,
north of Ffordd Pedrog, on either side of Capel Seion and in two housing
estates in the angle between Ffordd Pedrog and the road leading down
to the Glyn y Weddw Arms and the church and, further to the east on a
spur beyond Bryn y Gro. There are now around 200 properties at the upper
village, north of the Glyn y Weddw Arms and over 100 more on the lower
ground near the shore and north-west of the church. Many of the properties
are large bungalows with garages attached, others, a little earlier,
are two-storey. There is, nevertheless, a very eclectic range of housing
stock and, in particular, the old ‘Pig Street’ village retains
sufficient character to be both interesting and capable of signposting
the sequence of its early development.
Some of the earliest houses in the upper village
(Pig Street) are low, single-storey, structures as at Ty’n
Refail, the site of the smithy, where four cottages form a
terrace, with a fifth added at the east end. The eaves drop
to the height of the door, the walls are rendered, with the
exception of one where it is clear that they are of random
rubble construction. Similar cottages, Gwynant and Gernant,
stand 50m back from the road, down a path which crosses a small
stream. These, and the group at Ty’n Refail, are likely
to have been roofed with thatch (they are slated now). It is
here, on seeing these cottages with their thatched roofs, that
Hyde Hall lamented the lack of initiative in not importing
available slates for the purpose.
Ty Isaf is a substantial two-storey property
with fireplace and chimneys in each gable. The long axis is
perpendicular to the street and a single-storey building is
attached to the south gable, in line with the main house. The
roof of the house is slated; the annexe is roofed in corrugated
iron. The group may once have been a small, late eighteenth-
or early nineteenth-century farmhouse. The walls are completely
rendered. John Parry, a joiner, aged sixty, lived in this house
with his wife and three children in 1861. He was still living
there twenty years later.
The Pen y Bryn area is a mini-acropolis of temples. Capel Peniel stands
35m back from the road on rising ground above an open forecourt. The
forecourt was originally more enclosed in the late nineteenth century
than in the present day, with structures ranged across the north side.
The chapel is large and accompanied by a substantial chapel house. The
schoolroom on the west is a later addition. Further up the hill, on the
rock of Pen y Bryn, stands Rehoboth – Capel Wesla and its chapel
house. At the foot of this hill of chapels stands a group of buildings
along Ffordd Pedrog and flanking the lane to Pen y Bryn. These properties
may very well have been built in the early decades of the nineteenth
century. Two large buildings stand two-storeys high. One on the corner
has a facetted face where the two side walls meet. Both buildings are
rendered and the windows are modern. The lower half of the exterior of
the corner property has perpendicular panelled recesses in low relief
plasterwork. Buildings in this position are shown on the Llanbedrog tithe
survey of the 1830s and may be commercial premises. A row of five two-storey
cottages, very much smaller than the properties on the corner, extend
eastward along Ffordd Pedrog.
Across the main road and westward lie eighteen
two-storied, terraced houses of the later Victorian period
with long narrow back plots. Some are rendered of pebble-dashed
but where the walls are exposed they can be seen to be of random
quarried rubble with brick chimney stacks, sometimes decorated
with alternate coloured bricks. The windows and doors are mostly
modern. These are workmans’ cottages of the stone-quarrying
and sett-making period in Llanbedrog and a number of sett men
can be located at these premises. At Number 2 Madryn Terrace,
for example, there lived, in 1881, James Ginns and his wife
and son, lodging with Robert Humphreys and his wife. James,
his son, also names James and Robert all worked in the quarries
as sett-makers.
Holton is a product of the last quarter of
the nineteenth century. The façade is not imposing despite
the symmetrical arrangement of openings, the bay windows and
porch and the unusual arched window over the door. The masonry,
however, is unusual, in more-or-less coursed, irregular-sized
quarried stone and pseudo-snecking, with a nod to Plas Glyn
y Weddw. The house is set back 40m from the roadside with an
ornamental garden set in front of the house. Holton was occupied
by Charles Coldicot, Esq., his wife and two children in 1881.
The early twentieth century brought with it some changes, which reflect
the rather sedate form of holiday making Llanbedrog had to offer. The
two houses of Bwthyn and Dwyfor were, originally, one premises – the
Post Office, with its suitably attractive decorated façade.
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