History of Nant Gwrtheyrn
Cymraeg
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Nant Gwrtheyrn is a picturesque quarry village on the Llyn Peninsula with
two rows of houses, a "plas" (a mansion), a chapel, a café
and an old "co-op" which today has been transformed into an information
centre. The Eifl mountain stands proud behind the village and in front
of it the sea stretches out towards Angelsey. On a fine day, Ireland is
in view. The village has been the home of the National Language Centre
since 1978, but Nant Gwrtheyrn's history goes back at least two thousand
years.
Early History
Two very important aspects of the Nant's history can be seen on the road between the villages of Llanaelhaearn and Llithfaen. On the left is Tre'r Ceiri, and on the right is the Eifl with its store of granite and iron. There were inhabitants in both places around 150 B.C. and 400 A.D. Not much is known about these people, but there is no doubt that the lives of the warring kings of the district and their enemies depended on iron and that the iron was being sold. Around the fourth century A.D. a road network was built around Wales to carry iron - to Caernarfon, Meirionnydd, Brecon and Ceredigion.
The Romans
In the Mabinogion there is a story featuring Macsen Wledig or Magnus Maximus
and Elen Luyddog, the daughter of King Eudaf. According to the story they
fell in love and Elen persuaded him to build a new road to carry metal
from the district. When Macsen left Britain for Brittany in 383 A.D. with
his army, Elen and her two brothers, Cynan and Gadeon, went with him.
Macsen died in Brittany and Eudaf's army never returned. Is the story
true? Perhaps.
An ancient manuscript, the Notitia Dignitatum (dated around 429 A.D.), mentions an army from Caernarfon leaving for the Balkans, and it is well known that Cynan had settled in the area around Nantes. In fact, he ruled that if any girl married one of his soldiers her tongue would be cut off to secure that her children would only speak their fathers' tongue!
During this time, Cunedda's army descended from Gododdin, situated in southern Scotland today, to help Gwynedd fight against the Irish. Why was this? It is possible that the district of Gwynedd needed the extra manpower with Eudaf's army in France. It is said that Cunedda had come down at the request of "Gwrtheyrn".
After the Romans
When the Romans departed they left Britain in the charge of local stewards who inevitably gained considerable power. It is possible that some may have had the title "gwrtheyrn" placed upon them - "gor" is 'super' and "teyrn" means 'king' . There was definitely more than one Gwrtheyrn. There is a place in Powys named "Gwrtheyrnion", and Cunedda himself was ordered to go up to North Wales by another "gwrtheyrn".
Gwrtheyrn y Nant
Gwrtheyrn y Nant was one of the stewards according to one source. This
"superbus tyrannus" lived in the district of Kent in southern Britain
early in the fifth century. He wanted to keep other "gwrtheyrnion"
from entering his district and, like the Romans before him, he decided
to enlist the aid of mercenaries from Germania and Sacsonia (Saxony).
Gwrtheyrn gave the Isle of Thanet near Hastings to them and their leaders
Hors and Hengist. Soon their wives and children were brought over to Thanet,
and one was Alys Rhonwen, Hengist's daughter. Gwrtheyrn duly fell in love
with her and asked for her hand in marriage. However, Alys was her father's
daughter, and she arranged a banquet one night placing Hors and Hengist's
men sitting next to the men of Britain. Suddenly, in the middle of the
feast, every one of Germania's men stood up and stabbed the British man
next to him with a knife. Gwrtheyrn fled with his family and his druids.
Is there any truth in the story? It is difficult to say. However, during the centuries which followed, the Saxons gained more and more land dividing "yr Hen Ogledd" (the Old North - south Scotland today) and the west, thus forming Wales and Cornwall as separate countries. Someone had to be blamed and Gwrtheyrn fitted the bill. He became notorious in legend and history as the British king who betrayed his own people to the Saxons. Until recently the Saxons or the English were still being referred to in Wales as "the children of Alys".
Dinas Emrys and the Dragons
Gwrtheyrn asked his druids for advice, and they told him: "Go to the
furthest point of your country and build a fort there". Gwrtheyrn
came through Mid Wales - where, according to one version of the story,
he somehow had time to give existence to the royal lineage of Powys -
to the mountains of Snowdonia and began building his fort. However each
time he attempted to build, the fort would collapse and disappear mysteriously.
Eventually, he found a fatherless boy who could help him, a young magician
called Emrys Wledig. Emrys told the king that there was a lake beneath
the fort's foundations with two sleeping dragons, a white one representing
the Saxons and the red dragon of new Wales. Gwrtheyrn drained the lake
and the two dragons began fighting in the sky. The red dragon was victorious.
The magician built his own fort, henceforth called Dinas Emrys, opposite
the lake - Llyn Dinas near Beddgelert - and Gwrtheyrn was forced to "go
north".
Gwynnys
Nennius' Historia Brittonum mentions Gwrtheyrn travelling with his druids and reaching the district of "Guunnessi". The location of Guunnessi was not known until 1963 when Professor Melville Richards showed that the name was still alive in the name of a farm called Gwynnys near the road from Llithfaen to Nefyn.
The End of Gwrtheyrn
Why did Gwrtheyrn leave for the north and settle in Nant Gwrtheyrn? Was he aware that there was enough iron to make weapons for a whole army? What happened to Gwrtheyrn afterwards? There are two versions of his story. In the first, God sent fire from Heaven to burn him, signified perhaps by the lightning storms which occur in the Nant. As they were trying to flee from the Nant, Gwrtheyrn and his son, Gwrthefyr Fendigaid, were killed by Garmon, one of the local leaders.
In the other version, Gwrtheyrn broke his heart after opening the door for the Saxons. He lost his mind and roamed the mountains, which is a recurrent theme in Celtic literature. It is interesting to note that the major elements in these stories, the fire from heaven and the wandering madman, can be seen in another story which will be referred to later.
Gwrtheyrn's Castle
In the 1770s, Thomas Pennant was travelling through North Wales writing his "Tours of Wales". He writes about a cairn or a tumulus which was near the sea at the bottom of Nant Gwrtheyrn until around the year 1700 This was a stone grave covered with earth which was called Gwrtheyrn's Grave (Bedd Gwrtheyrn). Pennant also says that the people of the Nant had opened the grave and found a coffin containing the bones of a tall man. "Castell Gwrtheyrn" (Gwrtheyrn's Castle) was the name of this place on the early O.S. maps.
The Three Curses
A few years following Gwrtheyrn's death, it is said that one day three monks visited the Nant on their dangerous way to the monastery on Ynys Enlli (Bardsey). They wanted to build a church in the Nant but they were not welcomed by the local people, who were fishermen by then. In fact they threw stones at the monks. After their initial shock the monks cast three curses upon the Nant. First, the Nant's ground would never be holy again and nobody could be buried there. Second, the Nant would succeed and fail three times and would eventually fail forever. Finally, members of the same family would not be allowed to marry one another.
One version of the story tells how every man from the village was killed on that same night in a rough storm when they were out fishing. Without the men, the women could not live in the Nant and soon the Nant was deserted.
How dependable is this story? It is difficult without a precise date, but one must remember that the Celtic Church was completely separate from the Roman Church which came to the area in the year 777 A.D. It is possible that the story about the pagans of the Nant and the three curses was part of Roman propaganda.
Llywelyn ap Gruffudd
The Nant's history enters the dark ages after this up until the thirteenth century. By that time, the Nant belonged to Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Wales' last independent prince who had his court across the river in Aberffraw. The prince gave Nant Gwrtheyrn and Llithfaen to Heulyn ap Tudur ap Ednyfed Fychan.
Rhys and Meinir
In 1776 Thomas Pennant wrote a description of the inhabitants of the Nant at the time in his book Tours of Wales: "Three families live on the land as tenants" he writes, "growing corn and keeping a few cows, sheep and goats. They find it very difficult to get their small amount of produce to the market." Life was a struggle in the Nant. It was thought of as an isolated place and difficult to reach, and there was no village in Llithfaen. They made their own butter and bread, and salted the animals' meat. There was no coal available, so they had to burn peat and torches, which were made out of bundles of straw, heather, fern and gorse, the natural products of the mountain. When the fires had died out in the three farms of the Nant, fire had to be carried from a cottage at the foot of the Eifl. According to Elen Evans who lived in the Nant at the turn of the century, this was the way of life until the quarries opened.
This calm and quiet Nant is the background for one of the most famous and sombre love stories in Welsh; the story of Rhys and Meinir.
Wedding Plans
Pennant's "Tours of Wales" mentions "Ty Hen", "Ty Canol" and "Ty Uchaf" - which were the three farms of the Nant at that time. According to the story, Rhys Maredydd, an orphaned boy, lived with his sister on one of these farms. A girl called Meinir lived on one of the other farms with her father. Rhys and Meinir were the same age, and were also cousins. When they were young children they played together, and gradually they grew into teenagers and fell in love. A date was set for their wedding and preparations begun. The inviter was Ifan y Cilie, and his duty was to wander around the district bearing the good news. His did his work well. Every household heard from Ifan that Rhys and Meinir would be married in Clynnog Church on a chosen Saturday.
Some of the neighbours were invited down to the Nant before the wedding to give gifts to the young couple. They all came, one giving a piece of cloth, another bringing some yeast flour, everyone bringing useful things. Food was plentiful in the Nant and all the guests and family were looking forward to the joyful occasion on the following day.
Searching for Meinir
The morning of the wedding arrived. The weather was fine as Rhys started his journey to Clynnog Church. Meinir was in her father's house awaiting Rhys' friends to come on horseback to take her to the church. As she caught sight of the group galloping down into the Nant, she ran to hide as was traditionally expected of her. The group went to the house to sing penillion and Meinir's father tried his best to keep them out by answering each verse. When they eventually entered the house they found that Meinir had gone. After searching for a long time, they believed that Meinir had been cleverer than them and had gone to the church without them. However, Meinir was not in Clynnog and people began to worry. Rhys and his friends ran back to the Nant and searched again, but to no avail. By the morrow, it became obvious that something had happened to Meinir. Rhys never gave up looking and as a result he lost his mind. He wandered all over the Nant night and day shouting "Meinir, Meinir". Months went by. Rhys would often go to a hollow oak tree above the sea where he and Meinir used to meet.
On a stormy night, Rhys was sitting under the tree when the sky opened with thunder and lightning. Suddenly, a lightning bolt split the hollow tree open, and the skeleton of Rhys' beloved Meinir in a wedding dress fell out. It is said that this was the end for Rhys. He died there of a broken heart and the lovers were buried together in the same grave.
It is interesting that the tale consists of four elements which have been witnessed previously in the Nant - the fire from heaven, the madman roaming the hills, members of the same family getting married and the fatherless son.
Rees and Margaret
The tale was first published in Welsh under the title "Priodas yn Nant Gwrtheyrn" (A Wedding in Nant Gwrtheyrn) in a famous collection of folk stories called "Cymru Fu 1862-64" (A Wales that Was). There was no name attached to the story but it is believed that the author was Owen Wyn Jones of Glasynys. However, the tale had appeared in English before this, entitled "Ceubren yr Ellyll" or "The Bride of Nant Gwrtheyrn", and the lovers' names in this version were Rees and Margaret. This version concludes with a fisherman's tale of seeing a skeleton moving across the beach at Nant Gwrtheyrn when he was out on the sea. People also allegedly saw two ghosts moving hand in hand - a man with a beard and long hair and a woman with hollow sockets for her eyes. It is also believed that no birds will land on the bark of the hollow tree except the owl and the cormorant.
The Story of Elis Bach
Ty Canol was the home of Elis Bach, an interesting character who lived in the Nant in the first part of the last century. He was a dwarf with legs only 30 centimetres long, but he was a swift mover across the rocks. During his time a market was held in the Nant to sell goats and sheep, and it was Elis' duty the night before the market to gather the animals ready for the morrow. However, Elis was nowhere to be seen on the big day itself. They believe that Elis died at the age of 55 around the year 1849. If he had lived another decade he would have seen great changes in Nant Gwrtheyrn.
Opening the Quarries
The quiet life in the Nant ended when companies began quarrying for rocks soon after the first half of the last century. Big cities like Liverpool and Manchester were rapidly developing and the areas around factories and docks were getting busier. Roads with hard, solid surfaces were needed and the answer was to build roads with "sets", which were slabs of granite made into square or rectangular blocks. Granite quarries were opened in Penmaenmawr and above Trefor to cope with the demand, being well situated near the sea in order to send the stone sets away on ships. This was the background for the opening the quarries in Nant Gwrtheyrn shortly after 1950.
The First Workers
Numerous attempts were made to open a sets works in the Nant. The first to try was Hugh Owen from Anglesey, and others followed. Around 1861 a company called Kneeshaw and Lupton from Liverpool began developing the Nant. A quarry was opened on the southern side, and soon afterwards a jetty was constructed, and a row of houses built on even land near the shore for the first workers. This was called "Holyhead View" or the Barics; thirteen small houses between two bigger ones in an "I" shape. Most of these new workers were Irish, who spent a short while in the Nant before moving on to some other heavy work.
Many Welshmen were attracted to work in the Nant as well because the money was better than on the farms. They would come on Monday morning with enough food for the week, and stay in the Barics until Saturday.
Building the Houses
The first inhabitants of the Barics were men, but gradually some of the
workers brought their wives to live with them. The Nant was changing.
Instead of the three farms and around 16 people, there was a thriving
industrial village and before long there was over 60 people living there.
The village was given an English name by Kneeshaw and Lupton, Port Nant.
The sets work was successful in the Nant and three quarries were opened - Cae'r Nant, Porth y Nant and Carreg y Llam. 150 - 200 ton ships were loaded regularly, carrying sets to Liverpool, Manchester, Birkenhead and to the four corners of the world. In 1878, the company decided to build 24 new solid houses which are still there today. They were raised in two L-shaped rows, with "Sea View" facing the sea and "Mountain View" facing the quarry. Their names are Trem y Môr and Trem y Mynydd today. On the south end of "Sea View" there was a large house, "Bay View", with a shop and a bakery behind. The circular oven of the bakery could be seen until 1994. On the farthest side of "Mountain View" another house was built on separate land, and this was the "Plas", the home of the Quarry Manager.
By the 1886 census the number of the Nant's inhabitants had risen up to 200. There were three farming families and around 190 quarry workers and their families. Two out of three workers were Welsh speaking coming from Pistyll and Edern on the Llyn Peninsula, from Penmaenmawr in Arfon and Anglesey farms. There were 65 non-Welsh; one or two from Scotland but the majority from England, especially Mount Sorrell in Leicestershire. Some of the surnames, Baum for instance, are still alive in the area.
The Actual Work
Some of the workers were miners and their job was to drag down the rock. They did this by boring a hole through the rock with a gimlet; one would drive a sledgehammer while the other turned the gimlet. Then they would have to hang from a rope and place gunpowder and a fuse in the hole and light it. Each different "ponc" (gallery) of the rock had its own name - Bonc Isa, Bonc Bach, Bonc Sir Fôn, Bonc Buenos Aires and so on. The rock would fall in various shapes and sizes. The next task was to break the stone lumps into shaped sets of a particular size, and this was the setter's job using various hammers. When the sets were ready they were put on wagons which ran down to the jetty on rails.
It was hard work but a close community had been established there from the beginning. Dr Huw T Edwards, the labour union leader, knew much about the quarries' early history, because his father had moved to the Nant from Penmaenmawr as a young quarryman, and rented one of the new houses with his wife. One day he had a bad accident in the quarry as he was working on a rope on the surface of the rock, when the land slipped where the rope was pegged and he fell with it. He was badly wounded and was unable to work for months. There was no sick-pay. However, every second Saturday evening for nine months the Irishmen would make a collection and bring a full wage to the sick man. Dr Huw T Edwards tells how he would, many years hence, "go for a walk through the village of Llithfaen so he could look down on the village of Nant Gwrtheyrn and raise my cap to those warm-hearted Irish people".
Work in the Plas
The workers were paid every second Saturday, and were immediately expected to pay their rent and their account in the shop.
One of the Nant's inhabitants and workers was Elen Evans, the mother of Ioan Mai Evans who still lives in Llithfaen. She came to the Plas around the year 1900 to work as a maid for the quarry manager, Mr Edward Jones, a Welshman from Conwy. Mr Jones was the quarry manager for over a quarter of a century, until 1906. In 1878, he saw his chance when Ty Hen farm became available, and began keeping cows and hens to sell produce to the workers for a profit. Edward Jones was still farming Ty Hen when Elen Evans came to work for him, and part of her work was to milk the cows morning and night - "getting up on Monday morning at four and making sure that the milking was finished by eight in the morning and by six at night." The milk was then sold to the workers, and the housewife's orders were "only the exact amount for everyone".
Following a weekend visit to England, the manager's wife returned and complained that the staff were not working hard enough. Elen Evans decided that this was the final straw, therefore she left for America on the Lucitania to live in Red Granite, Wisconsin, where her husband had gone to work as a setter in 1906. Both came back on the same ship in 1914, a year before the ship sank.
Religion in the Nant
The Nant was quite a rough place during the early days of the Barics.
According to one local historian the village was "the most ungodly and
uncivilized place in Llyn and Eifionydd". The workers would spend their
spare time "feasting and drinking". One should remember that this
historian was a Welsh chapel-goer who disliked any ungodly practices,
such as drinking and unreligious pastimes. As the Nant developed, a wooden
building was erected on the way to the Barics to house a school and a
chapel. Its name was "Y Babell Goed" (The Wooden Pavilion). The
Reverend David Evan Davies, Llithfaen, would come down to the Nant to
help and do missionary work in the village, and a priest would visit every
second Monday for those who were Catholics. In 1875 Nant Gwrtheyrn became
a sectarian church belonging to the Calvinistic Methodists. After three
years when the new houses had been built, a proper chapel was a priority
and Capel Seilo was built. The cost was three hundred pounds and there
was seating for a hundred and thirty, with services held in Welsh and
English. Capel Seilo still stands today, but the old Babell Goed was destroyed
in a storm.
Teaching the Children
Around the year 1900 there were forty members or so in Capel Seilo, over thirty children belonging to the chapel and around sixty attending the Sunday School. The Nant had the right to its own minister to hold services but, unfortunately, every minister would only stay for a short term. The minister's work consisted of holding a daily school for the children in one of the "Mountain View" houses; a kind of privately-funded school run by the quarry company. It was a very basic education, due to the fact that the ministers who would come to the Nant were hardly trained to be schoolteachers. Sometimes, when the Nant was "between ministers", the children would have to climb up the old track to the school in Llithfaen or stay at home.
In 1908 Caernarfonshire Education Committee took charge of the school and tried to improve the education standards. It was very difficult to do this because the teachers and the children changed so often. The HMI, the school inspectors, were extremely unhappy about the situation. One of these inspectors was Lewis Jones Roberts. He suggested in 1910 changing the name of the school: "from the hybrid Port Nant into the suggestive Nant Gwrtheyrn". The Education Committee accepted his suggestion.
Entertainment
There was no public house in the Nant. The earliest workers would roll barrels down the old track but later people began visiting the Vic tavern in Llithfaen. Many stories of accidents when walking down in the dark have been reported. A woman by the name of Mrs Butler died one night after getting drunk and freezing to death on the wide bend half way down the hill. The bend is named after her - "Troad Butler" (Butler's Bend).
There is a story about an Englishman called Barlow who was walking home late to the Nant one night, after drinking a few pints. Suddenly he saw a dark figure resembling a man in front of him, and he got so scared he stopped in his tracks. When the dark figure moved he turned on his heels and headed swiftly back to Llithfaen and knocked on the door of the first house. After Barlow had quietened down, two men went down with him into the Nant. After reaching the same spot, Barlow again stopped in his tracks. The ghostly figure was still there. The other two quickly realized that all he had seen was a small hawthorn tree. For years following the incident, the tree was called "Bwgan Barlow" (Barlow's Bogeyman) by the people of the Nant.
A Shipwreck in the Nant
Ships would leave the Nant loaded full of sets, but they would also come
in full of all kind of products from Liverpool. As a result, people would
come flocking into the Nant from miles around to purchase products which
were unavailable locally. "Amy Summerfield" was one of these ships.
One stormy night she came into port and her bow was secured. A rope was
tied over the capstan, but it came loose and the ship dragged onto her
side on the beach. The captain attempted to put her back in the deep water
but the propeller crashed against the rocks, leaving the ship to the mercy
of the wind and the waves. The ship was destroyed and they nearly lost
the landing stage as well.
The Beginning of the End
The Nant had reached its peak in the years from 1878 up until the First World War. By the end of 1915 the number of schoolchildren was down to 17, and the Nant Quarry closed. Some of the men got work in the Cae Nant and Carreg Llam Quarry but many moved away from the village. Gradually, people moved from the old Barics to the empty houses of Mountain View and Sea View. This was an extremely lucky move for them because in 1925 there was a landslide where the Barics were and the houses fell into the sea.
However, the Nant Quarry was reopened by another company, and during the thirties life returned to the Nant when the need arose once more for granite for roads and tunnels. This is the period described by Eileen M Webb in his book "This Valley Was Ours" (1983). The chapel and the school reopened, creating a proper community, but the prosperity of the past had disappeared. Before 1914 there were forty members in the chapel, but in the thirties there were only twelve to fifteen members. There was greater pressure on families to move to Llithfaen to be closer to a doctor, shops and the secondary school.
When the Second World War broke out the Nant Quarry was shut for the last time, and one by one the families left. The 23 July 1948 edition of "Y Cymro" featured two photographs which told the whole story; one of John Roberts and his niece leaving their house in the Nant to live in Llithfaen; and the other of two of the Nant's men packing the school's furniture on a sledge to carry them up the hill. Two or three families of squatters moved into the empty houses in 1949 and the Education Committee reopened the school for a few years. But the days of a quarry community in the Nant were over.
Starting Again
In 1970, Dr Carl Clowes moved from his native Manchester to run a new practice in Llanaelhaearn. He was determined to bring his children up as Welsh-speakers. The community was in trouble however; there were rumours that the Trefor quarry was going to close. Llanaelhaearn school was in danger of closing because it was too small. The new doctor thought that the area desperately needed something new.
At the same time more and more people were learning Welsh. There were many classes held throughout Wales and summer schools had been organized, the first being held in Harlech in 1961. There was a general feeling that a specialized centre was essential, a national language centre which would be open all year.
Both ideas merged, and many tutors and friends decided to start a trust fund in order to purchase the village of Nant Gwrtheyrn.
Buying the Village
By 1978 they had sufficient funds (£25,000) to buy the village, which had been empty since 1959, from the Amie Road Stone Company. They began to renovate the houses immediately and, in April 1982, the first group went to the Nant, despite the fact that there were no phones or electricity, to hold the first course.
Acen In Nant Gwrtheyrn
Acen has been holding courses at Nant Gwrtheyrn since 1989.
Copyright: Prof Bedwyr Lewis Jones, Elen Rhys.
Nant Gwrtheyrn is a picturesque quarry village on the Llyn Peninsula with
two rows of houses, a "plas" (a mansion), a chapel, a café
and an old "co-op" which today has been transformed into an information
centre. The Eifl mountain stands proud behind the village and in front
of it the sea stretches out towards Angelsey. On a fine day, Ireland is
in view. The village has been the home of the National Language Centre
since 1978, but Nant Gwrtheyrn's history goes back at least two thousand
years.
Early History
Two very important aspects of the Nant's history can be seen on the road between the villages of Llanaelhaearn and Llithfaen. On the left is Tre'r Ceiri, and on the right is the Eifl with its store of granite and iron. There were inhabitants in both places around 150 B.C. and 400 A.D. Not much is known about these people, but there is no doubt that the lives of the warring kings of the district and their enemies depended on iron and that the iron was being sold. Around the fourth century A.D. a road network was built around Wales to carry iron - to Caernarfon, Meirionnydd, Brecon and Ceredigion.
The Romans
In the Mabinogion there is a story featuring Macsen Wledig or Magnus Maximus
and Elen Luyddog, the daughter of King Eudaf. According to the story they
fell in love and Elen persuaded him to build a new road to carry metal
from the district. When Macsen left Britain for Brittany in 383 A.D. with
his army, Elen and her two brothers, Cynan and Gadeon, went with him.
Macsen died in Brittany and Eudaf's army never returned. Is the story
true? Perhaps.
An ancient manuscript, the Notitia Dignitatum (dated around 429 A.D.), mentions an army from Caernarfon leaving for the Balkans, and it is well known that Cynan had settled in the area around Nantes. In fact, he ruled that if any girl married one of his soldiers her tongue would be cut off to secure that her children would only speak their fathers' tongue!
During this time, Cunedda's army descended from Gododdin, situated in southern Scotland today, to help Gwynedd fight against the Irish. Why was this? It is possible that the district of Gwynedd needed the extra manpower with Eudaf's army in France. It is said that Cunedda had come down at the request of "Gwrtheyrn".
After the Romans
When the Romans departed they left Britain in the charge of local stewards who inevitably gained considerable power. It is possible that some may have had the title "gwrtheyrn" placed upon them - "gor" is 'super' and "teyrn" means 'king' . There was definitely more than one Gwrtheyrn. There is a place in Powys named "Gwrtheyrnion", and Cunedda himself was ordered to go up to North Wales by another "gwrtheyrn".
Gwrtheyrn y Nant
Gwrtheyrn y Nant was one of the stewards according to one source. This
"superbus tyrannus" lived in the district of Kent in southern Britain
early in the fifth century. He wanted to keep other "gwrtheyrnion"
from entering his district and, like the Romans before him, he decided
to enlist the aid of mercenaries from Germania and Sacsonia (Saxony).
Gwrtheyrn gave the Isle of Thanet near Hastings to them and their leaders
Hors and Hengist. Soon their wives and children were brought over to Thanet,
and one was Alys Rhonwen, Hengist's daughter. Gwrtheyrn duly fell in love
with her and asked for her hand in marriage. However, Alys was her father's
daughter, and she arranged a banquet one night placing Hors and Hengist's
men sitting next to the men of Britain. Suddenly, in the middle of the
feast, every one of Germania's men stood up and stabbed the British man
next to him with a knife. Gwrtheyrn fled with his family and his druids.
Is there any truth in the story? It is difficult to say. However, during the centuries which followed, the Saxons gained more and more land dividing "yr Hen Ogledd" (the Old North - south Scotland today) and the west, thus forming Wales and Cornwall as separate countries. Someone had to be blamed and Gwrtheyrn fitted the bill. He became notorious in legend and history as the British king who betrayed his own people to the Saxons. Until recently the Saxons or the English were still being referred to in Wales as "the children of Alys".
Dinas Emrys and the Dragons
Gwrtheyrn asked his druids for advice, and they told him: "Go to the
furthest point of your country and build a fort there". Gwrtheyrn
came through Mid Wales - where, according to one version of the story,
he somehow had time to give existence to the royal lineage of Powys -
to the mountains of Snowdonia and began building his fort. However each
time he attempted to build, the fort would collapse and disappear mysteriously.
Eventually, he found a fatherless boy who could help him, a young magician
called Emrys Wledig. Emrys told the king that there was a lake beneath
the fort's foundations with two sleeping dragons, a white one representing
the Saxons and the red dragon of new Wales. Gwrtheyrn drained the lake
and the two dragons began fighting in the sky. The red dragon was victorious.
The magician built his own fort, henceforth called Dinas Emrys, opposite
the lake - Llyn Dinas near Beddgelert - and Gwrtheyrn was forced to "go
north".
Gwynnys
Nennius' Historia Brittonum mentions Gwrtheyrn travelling with his druids and reaching the district of "Guunnessi". The location of Guunnessi was not known until 1963 when Professor Melville Richards showed that the name was still alive in the name of a farm called Gwynnys near the road from Llithfaen to Nefyn.
The End of Gwrtheyrn
Why did Gwrtheyrn leave for the north and settle in Nant Gwrtheyrn? Was he aware that there was enough iron to make weapons for a whole army? What happened to Gwrtheyrn afterwards? There are two versions of his story. In the first, God sent fire from Heaven to burn him, signified perhaps by the lightning storms which occur in the Nant. As they were trying to flee from the Nant, Gwrtheyrn and his son, Gwrthefyr Fendigaid, were killed by Garmon, one of the local leaders.
In the other version, Gwrtheyrn broke his heart after opening the door for the Saxons. He lost his mind and roamed the mountains, which is a recurrent theme in Celtic literature. It is interesting to note that the major elements in these stories, the fire from heaven and the wandering madman, can be seen in another story which will be referred to later.
Gwrtheyrn's Castle
In the 1770s, Thomas Pennant was travelling through North Wales writing his "Tours of Wales". He writes about a cairn or a tumulus which was near the sea at the bottom of Nant Gwrtheyrn until around the year 1700 This was a stone grave covered with earth which was called Gwrtheyrn's Grave (Bedd Gwrtheyrn). Pennant also says that the people of the Nant had opened the grave and found a coffin containing the bones of a tall man. "Castell Gwrtheyrn" (Gwrtheyrn's Castle) was the name of this place on the early O.S. maps.
The Three Curses
A few years following Gwrtheyrn's death, it is said that one day three monks visited the Nant on their dangerous way to the monastery on Ynys Enlli (Bardsey). They wanted to build a church in the Nant but they were not welcomed by the local people, who were fishermen by then. In fact they threw stones at the monks. After their initial shock the monks cast three curses upon the Nant. First, the Nant's ground would never be holy again and nobody could be buried there. Second, the Nant would succeed and fail three times and would eventually fail forever. Finally, members of the same family would not be allowed to marry one another.
One version of the story tells how every man from the village was killed on that same night in a rough storm when they were out fishing. Without the men, the women could not live in the Nant and soon the Nant was deserted.
How dependable is this story? It is difficult without a precise date, but one must remember that the Celtic Church was completely separate from the Roman Church which came to the area in the year 777 A.D. It is possible that the story about the pagans of the Nant and the three curses was part of Roman propaganda.
Llywelyn ap Gruffudd
The Nant's history enters the dark ages after this up until the thirteenth century. By that time, the Nant belonged to Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Wales' last independent prince who had his court across the river in Aberffraw. The prince gave Nant Gwrtheyrn and Llithfaen to Heulyn ap Tudur ap Ednyfed Fychan.
Rhys and Meinir
In 1776 Thomas Pennant wrote a description of the inhabitants of the Nant at the time in his book Tours of Wales: "Three families live on the land as tenants" he writes, "growing corn and keeping a few cows, sheep and goats. They find it very difficult to get their small amount of produce to the market." Life was a struggle in the Nant. It was thought of as an isolated place and difficult to reach, and there was no village in Llithfaen. They made their own butter and bread, and salted the animals' meat. There was no coal available, so they had to burn peat and torches, which were made out of bundles of straw, heather, fern and gorse, the natural products of the mountain. When the fires had died out in the three farms of the Nant, fire had to be carried from a cottage at the foot of the Eifl. According to Elen Evans who lived in the Nant at the turn of the century, this was the way of life until the quarries opened.
This calm and quiet Nant is the background for one of the most famous and sombre love stories in Welsh; the story of Rhys and Meinir.
Wedding Plans
Pennant's "Tours of Wales" mentions "Ty Hen", "Ty Canol" and "Ty Uchaf" - which were the three farms of the Nant at that time. According to the story, Rhys Maredydd, an orphaned boy, lived with his sister on one of these farms. A girl called Meinir lived on one of the other farms with her father. Rhys and Meinir were the same age, and were also cousins. When they were young children they played together, and gradually they grew into teenagers and fell in love. A date was set for their wedding and preparations begun. The inviter was Ifan y Cilie, and his duty was to wander around the district bearing the good news. His did his work well. Every household heard from Ifan that Rhys and Meinir would be married in Clynnog Church on a chosen Saturday.
Some of the neighbours were invited down to the Nant before the wedding to give gifts to the young couple. They all came, one giving a piece of cloth, another bringing some yeast flour, everyone bringing useful things. Food was plentiful in the Nant and all the guests and family were looking forward to the joyful occasion on the following day.
Searching for Meinir
The morning of the wedding arrived. The weather was fine as Rhys started his journey to Clynnog Church. Meinir was in her father's house awaiting Rhys' friends to come on horseback to take her to the church. As she caught sight of the group galloping down into the Nant, she ran to hide as was traditionally expected of her. The group went to the house to sing penillion and Meinir's father tried his best to keep them out by answering each verse. When they eventually entered the house they found that Meinir had gone. After searching for a long time, they believed that Meinir had been cleverer than them and had gone to the church without them. However, Meinir was not in Clynnog and people began to worry. Rhys and his friends ran back to the Nant and searched again, but to no avail. By the morrow, it became obvious that something had happened to Meinir. Rhys never gave up looking and as a result he lost his mind. He wandered all over the Nant night and day shouting "Meinir, Meinir". Months went by. Rhys would often go to a hollow oak tree above the sea where he and Meinir used to meet.
On a stormy night, Rhys was sitting under the tree when the sky opened with thunder and lightning. Suddenly, a lightning bolt split the hollow tree open, and the skeleton of Rhys' beloved Meinir in a wedding dress fell out. It is said that this was the end for Rhys. He died there of a broken heart and the lovers were buried together in the same grave.
It is interesting that the tale consists of four elements which have been witnessed previously in the Nant - the fire from heaven, the madman roaming the hills, members of the same family getting married and the fatherless son.
Rees and Margaret
The tale was first published in Welsh under the title "Priodas yn Nant Gwrtheyrn" (A Wedding in Nant Gwrtheyrn) in a famous collection of folk stories called "Cymru Fu 1862-64" (A Wales that Was). There was no name attached to the story but it is believed that the author was Owen Wyn Jones of Glasynys. However, the tale had appeared in English before this, entitled "Ceubren yr Ellyll" or "The Bride of Nant Gwrtheyrn", and the lovers' names in this version were Rees and Margaret. This version concludes with a fisherman's tale of seeing a skeleton moving across the beach at Nant Gwrtheyrn when he was out on the sea. People also allegedly saw two ghosts moving hand in hand - a man with a beard and long hair and a woman with hollow sockets for her eyes. It is also believed that no birds will land on the bark of the hollow tree except the owl and the cormorant.
The Story of Elis Bach
Ty Canol was the home of Elis Bach, an interesting character who lived in the Nant in the first part of the last century. He was a dwarf with legs only 30 centimetres long, but he was a swift mover across the rocks. During his time a market was held in the Nant to sell goats and sheep, and it was Elis' duty the night before the market to gather the animals ready for the morrow. However, Elis was nowhere to be seen on the big day itself. They believe that Elis died at the age of 55 around the year 1849. If he had lived another decade he would have seen great changes in Nant Gwrtheyrn.
Opening the Quarries
The quiet life in the Nant ended when companies began quarrying for rocks soon after the first half of the last century. Big cities like Liverpool and Manchester were rapidly developing and the areas around factories and docks were getting busier. Roads with hard, solid surfaces were needed and the answer was to build roads with "sets", which were slabs of granite made into square or rectangular blocks. Granite quarries were opened in Penmaenmawr and above Trefor to cope with the demand, being well situated near the sea in order to send the stone sets away on ships. This was the background for the opening the quarries in Nant Gwrtheyrn shortly after 1950.
The First Workers
Numerous attempts were made to open a sets works in the Nant. The first to try was Hugh Owen from Anglesey, and others followed. Around 1861 a company called Kneeshaw and Lupton from Liverpool began developing the Nant. A quarry was opened on the southern side, and soon afterwards a jetty was constructed, and a row of houses built on even land near the shore for the first workers. This was called "Holyhead View" or the Barics; thirteen small houses between two bigger ones in an "I" shape. Most of these new workers were Irish, who spent a short while in the Nant before moving on to some other heavy work.
Many Welshmen were attracted to work in the Nant as well because the money was better than on the farms. They would come on Monday morning with enough food for the week, and stay in the Barics until Saturday.
Building the Houses
The first inhabitants of the Barics were men, but gradually some of the
workers brought their wives to live with them. The Nant was changing.
Instead of the three farms and around 16 people, there was a thriving
industrial village and before long there was over 60 people living there.
The village was given an English name by Kneeshaw and Lupton, Port Nant.
The sets work was successful in the Nant and three quarries were opened - Cae'r Nant, Porth y Nant and Carreg y Llam. 150 - 200 ton ships were loaded regularly, carrying sets to Liverpool, Manchester, Birkenhead and to the four corners of the world. In 1878, the company decided to build 24 new solid houses which are still there today. They were raised in two L-shaped rows, with "Sea View" facing the sea and "Mountain View" facing the quarry. Their names are Trem y Môr and Trem y Mynydd today. On the south end of "Sea View" there was a large house, "Bay View", with a shop and a bakery behind. The circular oven of the bakery could be seen until 1994. On the farthest side of "Mountain View" another house was built on separate land, and this was the "Plas", the home of the Quarry Manager.
By the 1886 census the number of the Nant's inhabitants had risen up to 200. There were three farming families and around 190 quarry workers and their families. Two out of three workers were Welsh speaking coming from Pistyll and Edern on the Llyn Peninsula, from Penmaenmawr in Arfon and Anglesey farms. There were 65 non-Welsh; one or two from Scotland but the majority from England, especially Mount Sorrell in Leicestershire. Some of the surnames, Baum for instance, are still alive in the area.
The Actual Work
Some of the workers were miners and their job was to drag down the rock. They did this by boring a hole through the rock with a gimlet; one would drive a sledgehammer while the other turned the gimlet. Then they would have to hang from a rope and place gunpowder and a fuse in the hole and light it. Each different "ponc" (gallery) of the rock had its own name - Bonc Isa, Bonc Bach, Bonc Sir Fôn, Bonc Buenos Aires and so on. The rock would fall in various shapes and sizes. The next task was to break the stone lumps into shaped sets of a particular size, and this was the setter's job using various hammers. When the sets were ready they were put on wagons which ran down to the jetty on rails.
It was hard work but a close community had been established there from the beginning. Dr Huw T Edwards, the labour union leader, knew much about the quarries' early history, because his father had moved to the Nant from Penmaenmawr as a young quarryman, and rented one of the new houses with his wife. One day he had a bad accident in the quarry as he was working on a rope on the surface of the rock, when the land slipped where the rope was pegged and he fell with it. He was badly wounded and was unable to work for months. There was no sick-pay. However, every second Saturday evening for nine months the Irishmen would make a collection and bring a full wage to the sick man. Dr Huw T Edwards tells how he would, many years hence, "go for a walk through the village of Llithfaen so he could look down on the village of Nant Gwrtheyrn and raise my cap to those warm-hearted Irish people".
Work in the Plas
The workers were paid every second Saturday, and were immediately expected to pay their rent and their account in the shop.
One of the Nant's inhabitants and workers was Elen Evans, the mother of Ioan Mai Evans who still lives in Llithfaen. She came to the Plas around the year 1900 to work as a maid for the quarry manager, Mr Edward Jones, a Welshman from Conwy. Mr Jones was the quarry manager for over a quarter of a century, until 1906. In 1878, he saw his chance when Ty Hen farm became available, and began keeping cows and hens to sell produce to the workers for a profit. Edward Jones was still farming Ty Hen when Elen Evans came to work for him, and part of her work was to milk the cows morning and night - "getting up on Monday morning at four and making sure that the milking was finished by eight in the morning and by six at night." The milk was then sold to the workers, and the housewife's orders were "only the exact amount for everyone".
Following a weekend visit to England, the manager's wife returned and complained that the staff were not working hard enough. Elen Evans decided that this was the final straw, therefore she left for America on the Lucitania to live in Red Granite, Wisconsin, where her husband had gone to work as a setter in 1906. Both came back on the same ship in 1914, a year before the ship sank.
Religion in the Nant
The Nant was quite a rough place during the early days of the Barics.
According to one local historian the village was "the most ungodly and
uncivilized place in Llyn and Eifionydd". The workers would spend their
spare time "feasting and drinking". One should remember that this
historian was a Welsh chapel-goer who disliked any ungodly practices,
such as drinking and unreligious pastimes. As the Nant developed, a wooden
building was erected on the way to the Barics to house a school and a
chapel. Its name was "Y Babell Goed" (The Wooden Pavilion). The
Reverend David Evan Davies, Llithfaen, would come down to the Nant to
help and do missionary work in the village, and a priest would visit every
second Monday for those who were Catholics. In 1875 Nant Gwrtheyrn became
a sectarian church belonging to the Calvinistic Methodists. After three
years when the new houses had been built, a proper chapel was a priority
and Capel Seilo was built. The cost was three hundred pounds and there
was seating for a hundred and thirty, with services held in Welsh and
English. Capel Seilo still stands today, but the old Babell Goed was destroyed
in a storm.
Teaching the Children
Around the year 1900 there were forty members or so in Capel Seilo, over thirty children belonging to the chapel and around sixty attending the Sunday School. The Nant had the right to its own minister to hold services but, unfortunately, every minister would only stay for a short term. The minister's work consisted of holding a daily school for the children in one of the "Mountain View" houses; a kind of privately-funded school run by the quarry company. It was a very basic education, due to the fact that the ministers who would come to the Nant were hardly trained to be schoolteachers. Sometimes, when the Nant was "between ministers", the children would have to climb up the old track to the school in Llithfaen or stay at home.
In 1908 Caernarfonshire Education Committee took charge of the school and tried to improve the education standards. It was very difficult to do this because the teachers and the children changed so often. The HMI, the school inspectors, were extremely unhappy about the situation. One of these inspectors was Lewis Jones Roberts. He suggested in 1910 changing the name of the school: "from the hybrid Port Nant into the suggestive Nant Gwrtheyrn". The Education Committee accepted his suggestion.
Entertainment
There was no public house in the Nant. The earliest workers would roll barrels down the old track but later people began visiting the Vic tavern in Llithfaen. Many stories of accidents when walking down in the dark have been reported. A woman by the name of Mrs Butler died one night after getting drunk and freezing to death on the wide bend half way down the hill. The bend is named after her - "Troad Butler" (Butler's Bend).
There is a story about an Englishman called Barlow who was walking home late to the Nant one night, after drinking a few pints. Suddenly he saw a dark figure resembling a man in front of him, and he got so scared he stopped in his tracks. When the dark figure moved he turned on his heels and headed swiftly back to Llithfaen and knocked on the door of the first house. After Barlow had quietened down, two men went down with him into the Nant. After reaching the same spot, Barlow again stopped in his tracks. The ghostly figure was still there. The other two quickly realized that all he had seen was a small hawthorn tree. For years following the incident, the tree was called "Bwgan Barlow" (Barlow's Bogeyman) by the people of the Nant.
A Shipwreck in the Nant
Ships would leave the Nant loaded full of sets, but they would also come
in full of all kind of products from Liverpool. As a result, people would
come flocking into the Nant from miles around to purchase products which
were unavailable locally. "Amy Summerfield" was one of these ships.
One stormy night she came into port and her bow was secured. A rope was
tied over the capstan, but it came loose and the ship dragged onto her
side on the beach. The captain attempted to put her back in the deep water
but the propeller crashed against the rocks, leaving the ship to the mercy
of the wind and the waves. The ship was destroyed and they nearly lost
the landing stage as well. The Beginning of the End
The Nant had reached its peak in the years from 1878 up until the First World War. By the end of 1915 the number of schoolchildren was down to 17, and the Nant Quarry closed. Some of the men got work in the Cae Nant and Carreg Llam Quarry but many moved away from the village. Gradually, people moved from the old Barics to the empty houses of Mountain View and Sea View. This was an extremely lucky move for them because in 1925 there was a landslide where the Barics were and the houses fell into the sea.
However, the Nant Quarry was reopened by another company, and during the thirties life returned to the Nant when the need arose once more for granite for roads and tunnels. This is the period described by Eileen M Webb in his book "This Valley Was Ours" (1983). The chapel and the school reopened, creating a proper community, but the prosperity of the past had disappeared. Before 1914 there were forty members in the chapel, but in the thirties there were only twelve to fifteen members. There was greater pressure on families to move to Llithfaen to be closer to a doctor, shops and the secondary school.
When the Second World War broke out the Nant Quarry was shut for the last time, and one by one the families left. The 23 July 1948 edition of "Y Cymro" featured two photographs which told the whole story; one of John Roberts and his niece leaving their house in the Nant to live in Llithfaen; and the other of two of the Nant's men packing the school's furniture on a sledge to carry them up the hill. Two or three families of squatters moved into the empty houses in 1949 and the Education Committee reopened the school for a few years. But the days of a quarry community in the Nant were over.
Starting Again
In 1970, Dr Carl Clowes moved from his native Manchester to run a new practice in Llanaelhaearn. He was determined to bring his children up as Welsh-speakers. The community was in trouble however; there were rumours that the Trefor quarry was going to close. Llanaelhaearn school was in danger of closing because it was too small. The new doctor thought that the area desperately needed something new.
At the same time more and more people were learning Welsh. There were many classes held throughout Wales and summer schools had been organized, the first being held in Harlech in 1961. There was a general feeling that a specialized centre was essential, a national language centre which would be open all year.
Both ideas merged, and many tutors and friends decided to start a trust fund in order to purchase the village of Nant Gwrtheyrn.
Buying the Village
By 1978 they had sufficient funds (£25,000) to buy the village, which had been empty since 1959, from the Amie Road Stone Company. They began to renovate the houses immediately and, in April 1982, the first group went to the Nant, despite the fact that there were no phones or electricity, to hold the first course.
Acen In Nant Gwrtheyrn
Acen has been holding courses at Nant Gwrtheyrn since 1989.
Copyright: Prof Bedwyr Lewis Jones, Elen Rhys.