3 Tan y Bwlch

Cadw's description

Location

Located on the south-west side of Tan Y Bwlch near its junction with the road to Deiniolen; low dry rubblestone wall in front with stone-on-edge coping and continuation to centre dividing small front garden from that of No.4 Tan y Bwlch.

History

The quarryworkers' settlement at Mynydd Llandygai was started in the 1860s by the Penrhyn Estate to accommodate quarrymen working in the nearby Penrhyn Slate Quarry and their families. This was done by enclosing an area of common waste on Llandygai mountain and fencing it off into long narrow plots of land running between 2 streets, Tan y Bwlch and Llwybr Main, linked by a narrow road (Ffordd Hermon), the whole of which forms a roughly rectangular area with a further, smaller area to the south-east. The plots were leased to quarrymen for 30 years on condition they built houses to an approved Estate design, after which period both houses and land came back to the Estate. A whole community developed here with both church and chapel built alongside the link road and a further chapel, Capel Amana, to the east serving a similar but smaller area defined by a street now called Gefnan. The design of the paired cottages is directly descended from the traditional croglofft cottage, itself selected by Benjamin Wyatt, agent to the Penrhyn Estate when it first began to build large numbers of cottages for its workers in the 1790s. With comparatively little modification this form of cottage remained the favoured type for quarryworkers' houses until the 1870s. 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 C19 and beyond.

Exterior

Belongs to a group of 2.

Nos 3 & 4 Tan y Bwlch, Llandygai.

Pair of quarryman's cottages, each of single-storey 2-room plan with loft, aligned north-west to south-east. Roughly coursed and dressed rubblestone blocks, rendered and painted to gable ends; slate roof. Each cottage has 3-light windows with slate cills on either side of slightly offset entrance; integral end stacks and shared ridge stack to centre between cottages. Windows to gable ends lighting lofts and catslide lean-tos at rear.

C20 windows flanking C20 panelled door with integral "fanlight"; integral end stack removed. Large C20 extension to rear.

Interior

Interior not inspected at time of Survey.

Reason for designation

Included, notwithstanding late C20 alterations to doors and windows, as among the better preserved pairs of slate quarry workers' cottages at the remarkable planned quarry community of Mynydd Llandygai, a settlement of considerable importance in the history of Welsh industrial workers' housing.