Nantlle is a small village in the Nantlle valley in Snowdonia. The village was a planned settlement built in the second half of the nineteenth century for workmen and managerial staff at Penyrorsedd Slate Quarry. It was a linear development along a pre-existing turnpike road that followed the course of the valley on the north side of two natural lakes, Llyn Nantlle Uchaf and Isaf.

The growth of the village is shown on the 1889 Ordnance Survey, and occurred largely in the period after 1863 when Darbishire bought Penyrorsedd Slate Quarry. The earliest developments appear to have been at the west end of the village, close to a sixteenth-century gentry house, Ty Mawr, which is the oldest surviving building in the village. A single-storey block of quarrymen's barracks was built in the village, which is the only known surviving barracks to be built in a village setting. Further east were terraces and two-storey houses built by the Darbishire family for workmen and quarry managers at Penyrorsedd, in the midst of which was Capel Baladeulyn, a Calvinistic Methodist chapel established in 1865. After the Elementary Education Act of 1870 the Llandwrog School Board built a school in Nantlle in 1873, designed by its chairman W.C. Williams. It comprised a school and school house, but stood originally in isolation beyond the east end of the village.

Statement of Significance:
Nantlle is set in an industrial landscape of slate quarries and a natural landscape of lake, moorland and mountain. It is a mainly planned village of the mid-late nineteenth century and many of its buildings were architect-designed, demonstrating how the influence of capitalist owners extended from the workplace to the home. It includes some of the highest-standard workmen's houses of the nineteenth century, in a village where there are also middle-class houses, whereby the hierarchy of the workplace is embodied in the buildings of the village.

The special character of Nantlle is derived from its use of local materials, specifically field stone for earlier buildings, and roughly-hewn slate blocks for the later buildings. Slate is used in distinctive ways, for example for gate piers and copings. Rough slate slabs, crawiau, are placed upright in rows to form `slate fences? forming garden boundaries, a practice taken from rural use and still to be seen in the slate fences forming field boundaries on the outskirts of Nantlle. It is an 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.

Nantlle and Cilgwyn are in many ways contrasting industrial settlements. Both, however, are set in an industrial landscape of slate quarries and a natural landscape of lake, moorland and mountain. The setting of the villages is therefore both distinctly industrial and Welsh.

Nantlle is a mainly planned village of the mid-late nineteenth century and many of its buildings were architect-designed, demonstrating how the influence of capitalist owners extended from the workplace to the home. It includes some of the highest-standard workmen’s houses of the nineteenth century, in a village where there are also middle-class houses, whereby the hierarchy of the workplace is embodied in the buildings of the village.

The special character of both Cilgwyn (and) Nantlle is derived from its use of local materials, specifically field stone for earlier buildings, and roughly-hewn slate blocks for the later buildings. Slate is used in distinctive ways, for example for gate piers and copings. Rough slate slabs, crawiau, are placed upright in rows to form ‘slate fences’ forming garden boundaries, a practice taken from rural use and still to be seen in the slate fences forming field boundaries on the outskirts of Nantlle. It is an example of continuity between rural and industrial traditions.  

In contrast to Nantlle, Cilgwyn 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 buildings and field walls are built mainly of 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.   

In combination, Nantlle and Cilgwyn document the development of industrial housing through the nineteenth century, from individual cottages of rural tradition to the planned rows of houses which are urban in inspiration and with aesthetic pretensions. They also document a gulf in the quality of industrial housing, when it is considered that the two-storey houses of Tai Baladeulyn are contemporary with the single-storey cottages of Greenland in Cilgwyn.  

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