Mynydd Llandygai is an estate-sponsored settlement that reflects an intention to root the lives of men working in Penrhyn Slate Quarry (NPRN 40564) and their families in the soil, and to create an industrious but dependent workforce. Its cottages, small-holding plots, and narrow roads leading straight to the quarry, immediately to its south, indicate the tradition of part-agricultural, part industrial work which is a feature of the slate industry of north-west Wales. Its places of worship, now in re-use, show the different religious allegiances of its population. Mynydd Llandygai contrasts with the dissimilar social organisation of Bethesda (NPRN 415226) on the opposite side of the valley.

The Penrhyn estate sponsored its own settlements for quarrymen at Mynydd Llandygái on the western sides of the Ogwen river. In 1796 the first part was enclosed as a potato-patch to feed the quarrymen and their families; the upper slopes were initially exploited as a turbary. The first houses were built in 1798 alongside the slate road from the quarry, and have mostly been replaced with late-nineteenth century dwellings for quarry officials. On the mountain, quarrymen’s dwellings on the lower road, Llwybr Main, were laid out in 1843 and on the higher, Tan y Bwlch, in 1862. These are half-lofted dwellings of traditional design, each with a long small-holding on the hillside, set out in regular order. Llwybr Main, No.7 (NPRN 412087) is one of a pair of workers' cottages built here, on plots which were leased to quarrymen for 30 years on condition they built houses to an approved Estate design, and after which period both houses and land came back to the Estate. The settlement at Mynydd Llandygai is also of interest for showing the continuity of a part industrial/part agricultural economy in a physically hostile environment well into the late nineteenth century and beyond. Former places of worship here include the Congregational (Independent) Hermon chapel, built in 1845, rebuilt in 1856 and again in 1879, to a sub-Classical design by the architect Owen Morris Roberts of Porthmadoc, and the Methodist Amana chapel, built in 1868 in the simple round-headed gable entry type. The spire of St Anne’s (Anglican) church, built in the early English style, is a prominent feature – as it was doubtless meant to be.

This site is part of the Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales World Heritage Site, Component Part 1. Penrhyn Slate Quarry and Bethesda, and the Ogwen Valley to Port Penrhyn. Inscribed July 2020.

Hannah Genders Boyd, RCAHMW, January 2022

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)

Cadw listed buildings, NJR 12/11/2010

Wales Slate World Heritage Site https://www.llechi.cymru/