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Llysfaen

Communities in Conwy County BoroughUse British English from August 2022Vague or ambiguous time from August 2022Villages in Conwy County BoroughWards of Conwy County Borough
Village street geograph.org.uk 730753
Village street geograph.org.uk 730753

Llysfaen is a village and community in Conwy County Borough overlooking the north coast of Wales, and situated on the hill Mynydd Marian. For local government purposes, it is also a ward. The community includes the Peulwys estate of Old Colwyn.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Llysfaen (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 53.279 ° E -3.668 °
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Address

Ffordd y Geulan

Geulan Road
LL29 8DX , Llysfaen
Wales, United Kingdom
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Village street geograph.org.uk 730753
Village street geograph.org.uk 730753
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Nearby Places

Llanddulas and Rhyd-y-foel
Llanddulas and Rhyd-y-foel

Llanddulas and Rhyd-y-foel (Welsh: Llanddulas a Rhyd-y-foel) is a community in Conwy County Borough, in Wales. It is located on the coast of Liverpool Bay, at the mouth of the Afon Dulas, 2.7 miles (4.3 km) west of Abergele, 3.6 miles (5.8 km) east of Colwyn Bay and 9.0 miles (14.5 km) east of Conwy. As the name suggests, it consists of the villages of Llanddulas and Rhyd-y-foel. At the 2001 census the community had a population of 1,572, reducing slightly to 1,542 at the 2011 census.Now derelict, Gwrych Castle stands on the hillside to the east of Llanddulas. Built between 1812 and 1822 by Lloyd Hesketh Bamford-Hesketh, it has been described as a "spectacular and romantic flight of gothic fancy," and was an attempt to create a replica of an Edwardian fortress. The castle contains 18 towers, and is surrounded by terraced gardens and woodland, with gothic park walling, lodges and towers. The total frontage is over 0.8 miles (1.3 km) in length, and has been described as "one of the finest examples of its date in Britain" by Cadw. It is Grade I listed.Saint Cynbryd's Church, in Llanddulas, dates from 1868, and was designed by George Edmund Street, who was also responsible for the Royal Courts of Justice in London. It is on the site of an earlier medieval church which had been rebuilt in 1732, and was commissioned by Robert Bamford-Hesketh of Gwrych Castle. It is described by Cadw as being "of subtle sophistication and quiet mastery" and is Grade II* listed. Similarly listed is Plas Tan-yr-ogof, a farmhouse on the Gwrych estate, built in 1819, which was used for a while as a night club.In 2008 a 1,148 feet (350 m) long honeycomb worm reef was discovered on the beach at Llanddulas, by fishery officer Philip Capper of the North Western and North Wales Sea Fisheries Committee after an absence of 60 years. The worms are common to the Mediterranean Sea, and are rare in the British Isles, but found at a number of sites on western and southern coasts. They create the reefs by forming tightly packed tubes from sand and shell particles on top of rocky shores, which then provide a haven for barnacles, crabs, limpets, mussels, periwinkles, sea anemones and whelks.Pen-y-corddyn-mawr is a hillfort located on a limestone plateau above Rhyd-y-foel, where Roman artefacts have been unearthed. Lead mines nearby are thought to have been worked by the Romans, and were still in use in the 1820s, when they provided the lead for Gwrych Castle's windows. The limestone hill of Cefn yr Ogof 204 metres (669 feet)stands above the village. Nearby is the crag of Craig y Forwyn.

Plas Dulas

Plas Dulas was a historic mansion in Llanddulas, Conwy, north Wales, with literary associations. Plas Dulas stood in the Garthewin estate, as part of a large farm, Llyndir. In the early 19th century, the Wynne family sold the land to Elizabeth Easthope, daughter of Sir John Easthope, using money from her elder brother's will, after she won a court case with her father. John Easthope was a politician and owner of The Morning Chronicle newspaper. He employed the writer Charles Dickens, who may have been a visitor to Plas Dulas. The house was built around 1840. Elizabeth Easthope also bought her sister and brother-in-law a neighbouring property, Bodhyfryd. They were art collectors, and some of their paintings are now in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The house was passed on through the family, finally owned by the academic Richard MacGillivray Dawkins. He knew the author Evelyn Waugh, who was a frequent visitor to Plas Dulas and wrote the 1928 book Decline and Fall while staying there in the 1920s. In 1925, Waugh taught at Arnold House, a former nearby private school in Llanddulas, and this inspired the fictional Llanabba Castle school in the novel. Dawkins was also a friend of Noël Coward, another visitor to Plas Dulas. Dawkins was interested in Greek plants and created Mediterranean gardens at Plas Dulas. After Dawkins's death in 1955, the house was bought by a Miss Fekete, a Hungarian and Christian missionary. She used Plas Dulas as a Christian retreat. She died without leaving a will in the late 1990s, by which time the house was in a dilapidated state. The house became derelict in November 1999 and was occupied by squatters, with the idea of creating a community centre. However, they were evicted and the house sold. Attempts to pull down the house for development failed even on appeal, but eventually the house was demolished in 2024.

Llanddulas
Llanddulas

Llanddulas is a village in Conwy county borough, Wales, midway between Old Colwyn and Abergele and next to the North Wales Expressway in the community of Llanddulas and Rhyd-y-Foel. The village lies beneath the limestone hill of Cefn-yr-Ogof (670 ft). This hill has large caves, and quarrying of limestone was formerly the main industry of the village, with crushed stone being exported from the 200 m long jetty. According to figures from the 2011 census, Llanddulas, combined with nearby village Rhyd y Foel, had a population of 1,542, with around 23% of the population having some knowledge of the Welsh language.Llanddulas is notable as being the place where Richard II was betrayed in 1399. and is also the birthplace of Lewis Valentine. Between 1889 and 1952 the village had its own railway station. According to legend, a cave on the mountain of Pen y Cefn was once the abode of the Devil, until the people of Llanddulas performed an exorcism at the cave to drive him away.Llanddulas Limestone and Gwrych Castle Wood is a Site of Special Scientific Interest. In February 1990 a storm and high tide caused extensive flooding to the east of here, especially at Towyn and Kinmel Bay. New coastal defence works were built along 7 miles of coast from Old Colwyn to the River Clwyd. At Llanddulas these consist of Dolos concrete. At Northern Towers, a gateway to Gwrych Castle, a battle is commemorated with four plaques. (See photograph bottom of page).

Coed Coch
Coed Coch

Coed Coch, in Dolwen, Conwy, Wales, is a large 19th-century mansion in the neoclassical style, designed by the architect Henry Hakewill. The building is Grade II* listed, as is its 18th- and 19th-century parkland.The mansion is of ashlar, originally with two matching, three-bay elevations. At a diagonal, was a "remarkable" Greek Doric portico, with pediment. This was removed in the early 20th century. The main elliptical staircase remains within a rotunda and lit by a small lantern dome. The original parkland "survives in its entirety".The Coed Coch estate came to the Wynne family when the Rev. Richard Wynne married Gaynor, daughter and heiress of John Wynne of Coed Coch, in the parish of Betws yn Rhos. Their grandson, John Lloyd Wynne (1776–1887) undertook the enlargement of the house and estate in the early 19th century. The estate then descended in the male line until the death in World War I of Edward Henry John Wynne (1893–1916). The estate was inherited by Margaret Broderick, his half-sister, who ran a famous Welsh Mountain Pony stud there that continued under her descendants until its sale in 1978.From the 1940s until the 1970s, the house was a boys' preparatory school, Heronwater School, under the headmastership of Keith Gaskell. In 1996 the furniture from the library, commissioned by John Lloyd Wynne from Gillows of Lancaster in 1806–1807, was bought by the Museum of Welsh Life in Cardiff; it can now be seen in the library of St Fagans Castle.