Nanhoron Gorge
Botwnnog
Efail Botwnnog
Melin Horon
Capel Newydd, Nanhoron
Inkerman Bridge
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Historic background
There is evidence of later prehistoric activity
on the fringe of the character area, towards the top of the
gorge where the Horon runs between Garn Bach and Carn Saethon.
There is a small hillfort on Carn Saethon and a cluster of
hut-circles on the terrace above the gorge at Pencaerau, between
Carn Bach and the steep slopes of the Horon valley (PRNs 4024,
4027, 4028, 4030, 4031) and 300m to the north-east at Clogwyn
(PRN 4024). There is an enclosed and nucleated hut circle settlement
of broadly the same period on the brow of a slope overlooking
a tributary stream of the Horon at 120m OD, 470m from Saethon
House. On the west side of the gorge there are two nucleated
and enclosed hut circle settlements on, or near, the summit
of the rounded hill of Bodlas (PRNs 418, 4017).
During the Middle Ages this character area lay within the commote of
Afloegion. Nanhoron was a hamlet of the freeholding township of Bodnithoedd,
now represented by a farm of that name, a little to the west of Botwnnog.
Botwnnog itself was a clas or quasi-monastic community in the tenure
of St. Beuno, owing nothing to the Prince except an annual token rent
of hens at the Feast of St. Michael (29th September), which it also
paid on behalf of the clas of Meyllteyrn, another Beuno church, in
the adjacent commote of Cymydmaen. Botwnnog’s landed interests
may have been extensive. The ecclesiastical township was occupied by
three gwelyau. One of the gwelyau, the heirs of Iorwerth ap Cenythlin,
may be represented by a component of the large dynasty or dynasties
which included the five gwelyau of Cenythlin. Part of the patrimonial
lands of the heirs of Cenythlin may have been ceded for the benefit
of establishing a church at Botwnnog in the earlier Middle Ages. A
church was in existence in the thirteenth century. By the early sixteenth
century Botwnnog had come to be a chapel of the rectory of Meyllteyrn.
The church was completely rebuilt in the nineteenth century.
Botwnnog
Botwnnog could hardly be called a village in the 1830s. There was a
crossroads in the southern part of the parish, between two streams,
one running down the Llaniestyn gorge to join the Soch and another
to the east draining the wetland, north of Nanhoron. There was a Calvinistic
Methodist chapel (Capel Rhyd-bach) near the ford or bridge on the eastern
stream and at the western stream, a ford and a smithy, Efail Pont y
Gof. The road on which the chapel and smithy stood was the west-east
route, to and from, Sarn Meyllteyrn. Mid-way between the chapel and
the smithy lay the crossroads. The road north took the traveller to
St. Beuno’s church at Botwnnog, 500m from the crossroads and
through the unfenced Rhos Botwnnog, on to Llaniestyn. The road south
ran to farmlands. There was a little complex of buildings around the
church.
Henry Rowlands, Bishop of Bangor, was born
at Meyllteyrn. He died in 1616 and, in the terms of his will,
made provision for the establishment of a school at Botwnnog
(he also ensured that almshouses were built at Bangor). The
land provided for was a small plot on the north side of Botwnnog
church, adjacent to the church yard. The old grammar school
was built in 1618. To the north again there was the house and
stable of Ty Mawr Farm; to the east, the house, Ty’n
Llan and outbuilding and garden and, 100m to the south-east,
the farmhouse of Tir Du.
By the end of the nineteenth century, an elementary
school had been established near Pont y Gof and a new grammar
school (not the original 1618 schoolhouse) was built on a new
site, south of the church. At the crossroad there were, by
the 1880s, two houses and a shop-and-post office on the corner.
There were, in addition, three further buildings dispersed
along the length of the road. By the end of the twentieth century
the village had increased considerably. The grammar school
had been greatly enlarged and a residential focus had been
established along the Meyllteyrn road, either side of the crossroads.
At the present time there are about fifty premises in the village
which include two schools and a health centre, an Anglican
church (St. Beuno’s) and the Calvinistic Methodist chapel.
The group of two Victorian houses, built as
one substantial development and the detached house, Post Office
and shop on the corner of the crossroads are an important indicator
of this phase of the development of the village. A sign above
the door also suggests that the post office was once a library.
The houses are of two storeys and an attic. One of the houses
has a projecting front bay on two floors. The post office has
a large rear wing. All the external walls are rendered, there
are three slate steps up to each door. A porch at the front
domestic access to the house/post office is original with ornate
facia on the pitched roof of the porch and the dwarf wall to
the small front garden is capped by iron-spiked railings, matched
by an iron gate. The chimney stacks on each of the three premises
are tall and can be seen to be of squared stone on the post
office building.
Nanhoron
The hamlet of Nanhoron was occupied by the Gwely Ropp’t ap Wion
and they took their corn to be ground at the Prince’s mill at
Gwerthyr, as did many of the townships and hamlets of Afloegion. Gwerthyr
was the Lord’s mill in Afloegion and tenants in Llangian, Penllefychan,
Botwnnog, Nanhoron amd Machros were obliged to mill there.
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When Hyde Hall visited Llangian in 1810 his
attention was drawn to a chapel of ease called Capel Gwyther
(that is, Gwerthyr). The site was pointed out to him but he
saw nothing, as the ruins had been removed, presumably for
building purposes. In 1535 the Valor Ecclesiasticus of Henry
VIII identified the rectory of Llanbedrog with its chapels
of Llanfihangel Bachellaeth and ‘Hirverther’ (perhaps
Y Werthyr). Near the smithy at Rhydgaled is a piece of former
moor called Rhos Gwerthyr.
In 1601 a grant was made to settle a jointure
of messuages and lands in Gwerthyr on Susan Thomas ap Hugh,
the wife of John Thomas ap William of Gwerthyr. In 1611 reference
is made to a messuage called Tyddyn Cae in Gwerthyr and a close
called Ceirchfryn Bychan and a messuage called Tyddyn Robin,
all in Llangian. The first edition 2in. Ordnance Survey manuscript
map identifies two properties 700m south of Nanhoron House
with the name Gwerthyr applied. The Llangian tithe survey of
c.1840 shows the two properties about 70m to 140m apart. The
northernmost is Gwerthyr, the southern property is ‘cae
tan yr odyn’ and barn, corresponding to Ceirchfryn in
the late nineteenth century. The northernmost of the two properties
no longer survives and the name is lost. Ceirchfryn (=’oathill’)
may have some connotation with the former presence of a mill.
The more recent mill, Melin Isaf, stands by the Horon stream
600m to the west. RCAHMW have associated a ploughed out, oval
enclosure and rectangular platform in the field immediately
to the west and bearing the name ‘Caerau Capel’.
Gwerthyr and the possible site of the chapel lie some 400m
south of Nanhoron Isaf.
The focus of Nanhoron is the house itself. The present house was built
in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. It stands on a spur,
at 45m OD, near the southern end of the gorge, where the landscape
opens out a little and where a tributary of the Horon, draining down
from Saethon, meets the river at Rhydgaled. An earlier house stood
nearby, about 50m to the east. A rent-roll of the years 1684 to 1704
of Richard Edwards’ Nanhoron was annotated in 1773 by Timothy
Edwards identifying that ‘this was his grandfather’s [actually
his great-grandfather’s] rent-roll, who built the house in 1677
and died in July 1704’.
The Nanhoron dynasty, on both sides of the family can be traced back
before the conquest of Gwynedd in 1283. During the late fifteenth century
Madog Fychan, of that branch of the family which was to inherit Nanhoron,
was resident at Llwyndyrus, south of Llanaelhaearn. Madog married Gwenllian
of the Cochwillan family, the sister of William ap Gruffydd who fought
on Henry VII’s side at Bosworth. Their son, Gruffydd, had Nanhoron
Uchaf and his daughter Annes, heiress of Nanhoron, brought the inheritance
with her in marriage to Rhys ap Gruffydd of twelve generations of the
Englefield dynasty. Their son Thomas inherited both Llwyndyrus and
Nanhoron.
Edward ap Thomas ap Richard ap Thomas ap Rhys ap Gruffydd’s son,
Richard, was born in 1628. Richard was entered at Gray’s Inn,
one of the four London Inns of Court, at the close of the second civil
war. He was the first to dispense with the patronymic, ap Edward and
took Edwards as his surname. He became an influential and successful
lawyer and despite coming under suspicion at the Restoration on account
of his Puritan sympathies, his expertise remained in demand. He built
what was probably a new house at Nanhoron Ucha, in 1677, to be replaced
soon after 1800 by Col. Richard Edwards. The plans had already been
made by 1796. This is, essentially, the building we see today.
Key historic landscape characteristic
•Dramatic visual appearance of the
Nanhoron Gorge
•Coherent quality and substantial
appearance of nineteenth-century industrial and estate buildings
within the Nanhoron estate.
•A succession of fulling and water
corn mills in the gorge, powered by the Afon Horon
•Site of Gwerthyr, an important royal
mill in the Middle Ages.
•Regular field patterns, some hedged,
some fenced with wire, stone walls lining roads are indicative
of estate management; clawdd banks topped with hedges in
the vicinity of Botwnnog.
•Important survival and location of
early Non-Conformist chapels on the edge of common land.
This character area is bounded on the north-west
by the steep western sides of the Nanhoron gorge and on the
north-east side by Carn Saethon and Carneddol. The south-eastern
boundary is defined by the Parliamentary Inclosure of Mynytho
common and on the south western side by the Neigwl plain. The
village of Botwnnog, at the south-western extremity of this
character area, is included.
Botwnnog
Although most of the building stock is of the twentieth century including
two-storey semi-detached houses and low-profile, single-story, bungalows,
mostly displaying ubiquitous pebbledash, there are features which bring
character to the village and provide indicators of its development.
The old grammar school building of 1618 measured
8.5m by 5.5m. It was a single-storey high with a small house
of roughly the same dimensions and height, attached. The walls
are of random rubble, the roof is now has new slates. The walls
of the attached house were later raised with larger roughly-coursed
blocks and two dormers inserted on the north-west side. Changes
have been made to openings with the provision of modern doors
and windows. There is a porch at ground floor level on the
north-west side, but with a door on the north side. The building
is now used as two private houses. Nevertheless, it is a historically
important building and has the added benefit of the association
of Moses Griffith, Pennant’s illustrator, who was a scholar
at the school, painted it and is buried in the churchyard.
Efail Pont y Gôf is a traditional single-storey croglofft cottage
with smithy attached in one continuous range. The walls are coursed,
squared rubble; the cottage has traces of white or pink-wash but not
the smithy. There are stone chimney stacks in each gable and centrally
over the party wall between the two components. Drovers’ routes
from southern Llyn would take their animals through Sarn Meyllteyrn and
Botwnnog. It is conceivable that animals might be shod at roadside smithies
on their journey north and east, as was the situation at Rhyd y Clafdy.
The present building is thought to be late eighteenth- or early nineteenth
century. If so the sixteen pane windows with horned sashes must be replacements
of the mid-nineteenth century. A smithy, house, garden and watering place
was in existence there in the 1830s.
Nanhoron
The steep-sided gorge of Nanhoron cuts a deep furrow across the landscape,
from the watershed just north of Carn Bach and Garn Saethon, south
towards the plain of Neigwl where the defile widens and the landscape
less is wild. The water of the Afon Horon and its tributaries are a
source of power and a number of nineteenth-century mills are powered
by the stream.
Saethon Factory stands on the Afon Horon,
150m south of Inkerman Bridge. It is described, in an assignment
against mortgage securities, in 1831, as a ‘manufactuory’ used
as a fulling mill, known by the name of Factory, and part of
the Saethon estate, at that time in the hand of Richard Lloyd
Edwards of Nanhoron. Pandy Saethon, another fulling mill, operated
on a small tributary stream, 250m southeast and further up
the eastern slopes above the gorge.
Melin Horon or Melin Newydd stands 650m south
again, on the main stream where a bridge crosses the river
to Bettris. The Melin Horon complex comprises a nineteenth-century
farmhouse with large rear wing and adjacent and attached farm
buildings. The farmhouse is probably early nineteenth century
despite the later windows and modern door. The farm buildings,
the bridge which crosses the stream and the large mill group
are mid to late nineteenth century, despite the plaque on the
wall which carries the inscription R.E.A. 1823 Na Ladrata (Richard
and Annabella Edwards, 1823. Don’t Steal!). The original,
or at least the early, nineteenth-century water corn mill was
smaller and fed by a diverted leat on the east side of the
complex, as was its later successor.
Three hundred and fifty metres south of Melin
Horon another bridge crosses the river from the east side to
the west. At the bridge, on the east side stands the Rhydgaled
smithy, house and garden. A cottage stands adjacent. One hundred
and seventy-five metres to the north-west stood Nant House
in 1840, later in the century it had become Siop y Nant. Within
the same area stood the Calvinistic Methodist Chapel – Capel
Nant. A couple of cottages stood next to the chapel, to the
north-east, on land allotted from the area of the Parliamentary
Inclosure. Capel Nant was established in 1782 on what was,
then, a piece of the common. The present, rather austere, building
with grey stone facade, was built in 1877. The cottages had
been removed by the second half of the nineteenth century.
Immediately across the Rhydgaled bridge, on the west side,
there stands an ornamental cast-iron-gated entrance and lodge
to Nanhoron House. The house is reached by a 300m drive.
Nanhoron is built on two storeys with a dressed stone façade and
a decorative verandah of cast-iron supports. The windows are symmetrically
arranged around a central door. The roof is hipped and slated. Internally,
the entrance hall is divided by a Palladian-style arched opening with
entablature supported by Ionic capitals on tapering columns. The house
was built around 1800 to replace an earlier building constructed by Richard
Edwards in 1677, a short distance to the east. There is a coach house
to the right of the house and an ornamental walled garden to the rear,
with a stable block along the east side of the walled garden and a piggery,
35m to the east. There is an ice-house in the woods behind the garden.
The home farm lies across the road to the north.
Bodlondeb is a good example of a mid-Victorian estate farmhouse. It lies
700m east of Nanhoron, on the east bank of the river on a small tributary
stream of the Horon. It was built on land previously occupied by Ty Gwrthlyn
cottage and its associated croft. Ty Gwrthlyn lay within the Parliamentary
Inclosure boundary and may have originally been an encroachment on the
common. The farmhouse is of two storeys, built of quarried squared-stone,
laid in courses. The roof is stated, hipped at the back. The farmyard
wall is of mortared boulder construction.
Capel Newydd stands 550m south-west of Bodlondeb and 700m south-east
of Nanhoron. The chapel is the earliest Non-Conformist chapel in North
Wales to have survived. The land was acquired by a community from Pwllheli
and the chapel was built and licensed in 1769. Despite suspicion of dissenters
by the Anglican landowning class, Nanhoron’s Puritan background
was well disposed to Non-Conformist communities (Capel Nant, Calvinistic
Methodist, followed the Independent, Capel Newydd, in 1782). Catherine
Edwards, wife of Captain Timothy Edwards who died returning from the
West Indies, was a benefactor of Capel Newydd and, after her husband’s
death, she joined the congregation. Capel Newydd stood right on the edge
of the common, as did Capel Nant, just inside it. The chapel is barn-like,
with an original large wide door, central to the north side, which was
later blocked and new doors inserted. There must be a suspicion that
this was, in fact, a barn conversion. The original box pews, pulpit and
earth floor survive. The construction is mortared rubble, laid in courses.
The lintels over the door and window openings are of stone. Conservation
work took place in the 1950s which included re-roofing and re-using the
original, or at least an early phase, of slates.
The Inkerman bridge over the gorge, with the
Nanhoron stone quarry on the western slopes opposite, once
carried an inscription and a date ‘Inkerman 5th Nov 1854’.
A continuation of the road down the gorge, past the bridge
and south beyond Rhydgaled, is known as Balaclava Road. These
are two poignant reminders of the Crimean War and its impact
on the Nanhoron estate and its family. The battle of Balaclava
took place in late October 1854. The Battle of Inkerman was
fought on 5th November 1854. The siege of Sebastopol continued
into 1855 and Captain Richard Lloyd Edwards was killed ‘before
Sebastopol’ on the 11th May. He was 22 years old.
The overriding character of this area, around
Nanhoron is the influence and association of the Nanhoron estate
in the substantial build, materials and attention to detail
of the industrial and agricultural buildings, the mills, farmhouses
and Nanhoron itself. The estate influence may also be seen
in the generally straight-lined, relatively large field boundaries
in comparison with, say, the adjacent curvilinear, smaller
fields of Botwnnog and Llaniestyn. Stone walls line roadsides.
Hedges and fence and wire boundaries are seen near Melin Horon
and hedges on banks near Bodlondeb and Capel Newydd. Plantations
of woodland are frequent on both sides of the gorge; around
Nanhoron House and in plantations along the north side of the
Mynytho Parliamentary Inclosure.
The Nanhoron area was the location of one of the more important mills
in Llyn in the Middle Ages. The site may be near the premises of Ceirchfryn
and the former holding of Gwerthyr and as such the continuing value of
the Horon as a source of power is a continuing reflection of an earlier
historic landscape.
Nanhoron, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, maintained Puritan
and Non-Conformist sympathies and this historical association is reflected
in the two early dissenting chapels in the area, of which Capel Newydd
survives.
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