HLW (Gw) 10

Ogwen Valley  

2001  

Outstanding  

Designated  

The upper part of the Ogwen Valley, or Nant Ffrancon. in north Snowdonia is a deeply glaciated valley of classic Alpine proportions, with its flat floor bounded on both sides by steep slopes that rise to hanging valleys and cirques below ice-worn peaks along the watershed ridges.The valley floor is at about 200m above OD with the surrounding chain of peaks among the highest in Wales, reaching I044m above OD at Carnedd Dafydd in the east, 999m above OD at Glyder Fawr in the south, and 822m above OD at Carnedd y Filiast in the north west. North of Nant Ffrancon, the valley is much shallower, but the high tributary valleys of Cwm Ffrydlas, Cwm Caseg and Cwm Llafar extend east to the Carneddau ridge between Carnedd Llywelyn and Moel Wnion. On the north west side, outside the main valley, the area includes Moel y Ci, Moel Faban, parts of the coastal strip east of Aber-Ogwen and the north east end of the Arfonian plateau as far as the mouth of the River Cegin on the Menai Strait. The area contains extensive and very well-preserved, relict remains of prehistoric and later land use, and in sharp visual contrast, the immense and diverse remains relating directly and indirectly to the industrial extraction of slate in the last and present centuries.As well as Penrhyn quarry itself, which is one of the few still working in Gwynedd, the contrasting style and scale of the settlements of quarry owner and workers echo the powerful social and economic forces which shaped, and still underlie, this landscape. Overlooking the slate town of Bethesda, the slopes of Moel Faban, Cwm Ffrydlas, Gyrn Wigau and and Cwm Caseg contain a palimpsest of relict archaeological remains indicating land use and activity from the prehistoric period to the recent past. There are a number of Bronze Age funerary and ritual monuments and burnt mounds (communal cooking places); several, very extensive and well-preserved, late prehistoric hut settlements, enclosures and field systems; Iron Age hillforts; medieval settlements of long huts and platform houses; 19th century quarry trials and levels, including a leat system and a tramway bed, a hone-stone quarry; and unique, large multi-cellular, drystone-walled sheepfolds. There are further extents of late prehistoric hut settlements and fields above Llanllechid, and vestiges of what might have been equally large extents on the lower slopes beneath Llanllechid and around Tregarth.There is also a large Iron Age hillfort at Pendinas, near the latter village. Further north west, between the Ogwen and Cegin valleys, on a natural terrace partly under what is now the Llandegai Industrial Estate, are the extensive, buried remains of a Neolithic, Bronze Age and later complex of funerary, ritual and settlement sites discovered from the air, including henges and a ceremonial avenue or cursus marked by ditches. The importance of the site is demonstrated by its location at the focus of natural routes along the Ogwen valley to the south east, and running east-west along the coast. The whole area is, however, dominated by the Penrhyn quarry, as was the whole Welsh slate industry, with its excellent quality slate worked by open terracing. The quarry remained the largest, single excavation in the world until the 1960s. Documentary sources hint that slate was being worked in this area as early as the 13th century, but the commercial development of the slate industry owed much to pioneers such as Richard Pennant of Penrhyn, who at the end of the 18th century acquired the numerous small quarries operating in the Bethesda area. A small quay was built in 1790 at the mouth of the River Cegin, on the Menai Strait near Bangor, to export the slate, and this was expanded in 1801 with the construction of Port Penrhyn, and a railway, originally built for horse-drawn trams, to link with the quarries. The trackbed of a slightly later, revised route of the railway survives with the section between Port Penrhyn and Felin-hên in use as a cycle track. The merging of several small workings into one large productive unit and the provision of an efficient transport system led to a considerable increase in the production of slates to a record output of over 130,000 tons in 1862, when 3,285 men were employed at the quarry.Thereafter, the industry gradually declined, and as in other slate areas, there was a series of protracted and bitter labour disputes culminating in 'Streic Fawr y Penrhyn' (the Penrhyn Lockout) in 1900-1903 which left lasting social scars remembered to this day. The consolidated groups of quarrymen's smallholdings on Mynydd Llandegai to the west of the quarry, each with its parcel of land bounded by slate pillar fences, are one of the most striking testimonies to the planning of the Penrhyn Estate, and contrast with the unplanned nature of most of the villages that developed in the valley, such as Rachub, Llanllechid and Tregarth. Lord Penrhyn also built a model village (with 'no corrupting alehouse') for his workers at Llandegai, outside the main entrance to Penrhyn Castle, which with neat rows of cottages raised around the old church, together with a saw mill on the banks of the River Ogwen, is one of the few examples of a model village in the area. In addition, much of the common land was enclosed at this time to provide grazing land for those with cottages on the Penrhyn Estate. The satellite villages form, after the quarry, perhaps the most important landscape elements of the industry. Bethesda has been viewed as a prototype of Caernarfonshire's quarry Villages, and is possibly the only slate town to have received any detailed study. The original chapel was built near a small group of quarrymen's cottages in 1820, was enlarged in 1830 and then again in 1840.The town also had two brickworks and rapidly expanded to become a classic example of both an irregular and planned development. Penrhyn Castle, seat of the Pennant family, was built by Thomas Hopper between 1827-37 for George Dawkins Pennant on a site which had been occupied since at least the 15th century. Built in Neo-Norman style, it is one of the most potent and enduring reminders of the social and economic forces that have shaped this area, and remained in the family's possession until its acquisition in 1951 by the National Trust. The castle is enparked inside a great wall with castellated gatehouses. The surrounding estate was improved for farming, and a new road through the Ogwen valley was carefully laid out in 1791-92 by Benjamin Wyatt for travellers, in order to get the 'most spectacular view around every bend'. The road on the east side of the valley was built by the Capel Curig Turnpike Trust in 1802 and improved in ensuing years, particularly by the construction in the 1820s of Thomas Telford's new Holyhead Road, the present A5. Nearly all the antiquarian tourist authors of the period provide detailed accounts of the valley and its quarries, including Thomas Pennant, one of the earliest and most famous writers, who