Cilgwyn is a small settlement on the slopes of Mynydd Cilgwyn in Snowdonia. It was built from the late-eighteenth century for men working at the nearby Cilgwyn Slate Quarry and was a largely spontaneous development by quarrymen on previously unenclosed moorland, in the form of a spontaneous patchwork of fields and cottages. Strictly speaking, these were illegal encroachments on common land, owned by the crown, but were not regarded as controversial. The village thus emergied from an informal cluster of smallholdings with small fields.
The pattern of settlement is well conveyed by the Tithe maps for Llanllyfni and Llandwrog parishes, dated 1839 and 1840 respectively. They show an isolated upland settlement comprised of scattered individual cottages, set in small enclosures, mostly between 1 and 5 acres, but with smallholdings such as Parc, Cae Gwyn and Hafod Las of between 12 and 18 acres. About half of the cottages were owner-occupied, the remainder rented from different landowners. Its link to the outside world was a moorland road that joined a road on the west flank of Moel Tryfan at the village of Carmel (not yet in existence in 1840). After 1840 the area of the village did not expand, but the density of settlement within it increased. New houses were built to accommodate the rising number of men employed at the quarry and they are shown on the Ordnance Survey map of 1889. The map also reveals a network of tracks and paths that evolved to link the various cottages. From 1842 there was also an Independent chapel.
Cilgwyn suffered depopulation after the quarry closed in 1956. By the late twentieth century many of the cottages had been abandoned, but the field pattern that evolved with them has remained.
Statement of Significance:
Cilgwyn is set in an industrial landscape of slate quarries and a natural landscape of lake, moorland and mountain. It was to a significant extent built by its inhabitants. As the spontaneous initiative of individual quarrymen Cilgwyn represents a local entrepreneurial and independent spirit, which is an important aspect of the social history of slate quarrying. It developed from the late eighteenth century, in the form of cottages and smallholdings on common land, the sense of which has been well preserved. It is a distinctly working-class village in which there is no significant social hierarchy embodied in its built heritage. The buildings of Cilgwyn are mainly single-storey cottages, some with associated farm buildings, another example of continuity between rural and industrial traditions.
Source:
Hayman R, 2017. Nantlle and Cilgwyn: An Urban Character Study (unpublished report for Gwynedd Council in support of the proposed Wales Slate World Heritage Nomination).
2.
Pre-industrial farmhouses survive within and adjacent to the quarries, embodying the transition from a traditional agricultural economy to an industrial society. Squatters’ cottages and field-plots enclosed without legal authority on land belonging to the Crown cover the mountain common to the north, leaving only the summit uncultivated. The inhabitants of this area successfully resisted and attempt to carry out a Parliamentary enclosure. Some are inhabited, though most were abandoned in the 1930s; this location is bisected by the tip of Cilgwyn Slate Quarry.
This site is part of the Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales World Heritage Site, Component Part 3: Nantlle Valley Slate Quarry Landscape. Inscribed July 2020.
Sources:
Louise Barker & Dr David Gwyn, March 2018. Slate Landscapes of North-West Wales World Heritage Bid Statements of Significance. (Unpublished Report: Project 401b for Gwynedd Archaeological Trust)
Tirwedd Llechi Gogledd Orllewin Cymru / The Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales. Nomination as a World heritage Site (Nomination Document, January 2020)
Wales Slate World Heritage Site https://www.llechi.cymru/
H. Genders Boyd, RCAHMW, January 2022