‘On the north east facing slopes of Elidir Fach, close to a mountain road from Dinorwig to Bethesda is a group of deserted cottages, with various outbuildings, walled gardens and paddocks. The whole of the gently sloping mountainside has been divided up into a patchwork of enclosures bounded by slate slabs and drystone walls, intersected by walled lanes. Nothing is shown here on the tithe map, but by the time of the c.1890 OS map the whole area had been settled. Four buildings were seen and photographed by Paul Davis in March 2020. They comprise (from east to west) Cerrig-y-nyth (SH 5959 6274); Tan-elidir (SH 5950 6270) Cae’r-gors (SH 5940 6263) and Bryn-brith (SH 5931 6260). There are at least three other ruins on the same flank of the mountain, as well as a number of modernised cottages still in occupation.
Each of the four named above consist of masonry crogloft cottages with slate roofs and slate lintels over the doors and windows. They have lean-to’s at the rear with a fireplace in the hall with a massive slate lintel. They seem to have been occupied for a considerable time, as all show signs of alterations and additions before being abandoned.’
One of the cottages, Bryn-Brith, is a Grade II listed building despite its present poor condition. The Cadw entry for the site mentions that it is shown on the 1838 Tithe Map, and ‘is likely to have been built as part of a smallholding created after 1814: the Enclosure Award of that year, following the Enclosure Act promoted by Thomas Assheton Smith the first (1752-1828) in 1806-08, allotted to the Vaynol Estate most of the mountain common close to his Dinorwic Slate Quarry. These holdings were typically of between 3 and 10 acres (1.2 and 4ha), characterised by the regular pattern of their field boundaries and enabled the quarrymen and their families to supplement their paid income by engaging in subsistence agriculture. While the plots were laid out by the Estate, the quarrymen themselves were responsible for building the cottages; the process of enclosure was initially contested by existing squatters on the common, including several quarrymen and their wives during the “riot” of 1809.
Bryn-Brith is a single-storey, 2 room cottage ‘aligned roughly north-east to south-west. It is built of irregularly coursed rubblestone with extensive traces of render; graded slate roof with coped verges. The front has windows (joinery largely gone at time of Survey) with slate cills on either side of slightly offset boarded door; integral end stacks with slate drips.’ Bryn Brith was listed in 1999 because ‘notwithstanding its poor condition, as an essentially well-preserved and largely unaltered early C19 quarryman's cottage typical of the type authorised by Thomas Assheton Smith as part of his development of the Dinorwic Slate Quarry after around 1814. The cottage forms part of a group of these buildings on the moorland edge near Dinorwic, a classic illustration of the way in which this major landowner sought to control the process of settlement associated with the exploitation of the Dinorwic quarries and encourage the development of marginal land.’
Sources: modern and historic Ordnance Survey maps; Cadw listed buildings database (reference number 22646) and notes by Paul Davis
M. Ryder, RCAHMW, 21 April 2021