Maentwrog is situated about 11km (7 miles) south west of Blaenau Ffestiniog and about 16km (10.5 miles) east of Porthmadog. The name ‘Maentwrog’ could be derived from the legend that Twrog cast a huge boulder off the cliff above the village. The boulder still exists as a standing stone next to the church tower.

The settlement has a long history. It was mentioned in the fourth branch of the Mabinogi, Math fab Mathonwy: ‘After crossing Traeth Mawr when fleeing south from the army of Math, Pryderi is killed in single combat by Gwydion at Felinrhyd (remembered in a place name about a mile to the west), and he is subsequently buried at Maentwrog.’

The lay subsidy rolls for Meirioneth covering the years 1293-4 records that Maentwrog had a hosteler (William Speder). According to Gwynedd Archaeological Trust, the term ‘hosteler’ was ‘unique in the county: similar people, for example in Nefyn, were referred to as ‘y gwestwr’ and this implies that Maentwrog had a ‘hostelry’ rather than a lowly tavern (and already perhaps had a foot in the tourist trade!)’.

Maentwrog’s location at the highest navigable point on the Dwyryd meant that, from at least the 18th century, Maentwrog and the surrounding area would have served as the commercial entry point for the Vale of Ffestiniog. There is clear evidence that timber was being exported from the area from around 1739, but Maentwrog really began growing as the slate industry developed, from around the 1760s.

The Oakley family of Plas Tan y Bwlch (NPRN 28687) made large profits from the slate industry, and they used this wealth to develop Maentwrog. Indeed, the present village ‘is largely a creation of the Oakley family, and bears many of the classic features of a gentry-sponsored estate village.’ The Grapes Hotel, also formerly known as Maentwrog Inn, was built as part of the improvement by the Plas Tan-y-Bwlch estate in the early nineteenth century. It appears on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map published in 1901 and is still open today. St Twrog’s church (NPRN 43905) and vicarage date from around the 1800s, whilst many of the other buildings in Maentwrog were constructed in the early and mid-nineteenth century. According to Gwynedd Archaeological Trust, the design of Maentwrog ‘is emphatically an exercise in creating a visually attractive settlement that reflected well on its owners.’ Interestingly, although the village is visible from the Oakley’s residence at Plas Tan y Bwlch, Maentwrog’s chapels have all been built in locations ‘which make them invisible from the Plas.’

There were three chapels in Maentwrog in the nineteenth-century: Maentwrog Isaf Methodist Chapel (built 1873); Gilgal Independent Chapel (built in 1841) and Seion Methodist Chapel (built 1834). Both Maentwrog Isaf and Gilgal Chapels were still in use as places of worship in the twentieth century, although Seion Methodist Chapel closed in 1975 and was in secular use by 2003.

Sources: modern and historic OS maps; Google maps; Gwynedd Archaeological Trust Report: ‘Historic landscape characterisation – Vale of Ffestiniog’ (GAT Project No. G1657, draft report no. 422), published in February 2003.

M. Ryder, RCAHMW, 24th November 2020