- Brynrefail, Gwynedd
Brynrefail is a small
village inGwynedd ,Wales that straddles the A4244trunk road roughly betweenDeiniolen andLlanberis . The village is often confused withBrynrefail onAnglesey but the two are some considerable distance apart and in different counties.The village is in
Wales (European Parliament constituency) theCaernarfon (UK Parliament constituency) and theGwynedd Council Ward of Penisarwaen.Brynrefail stands a short walk from the northern shore of
Llyn Padarn lake.Afon Rhythallt leaves the lake at this point becomingAfon Seiont downstream atPont Rhythallt ,Llanrug before meandering its historic way to the sea.The main street (now quiet after the by-pass was built in the 1960s) is mainly comprised of traditional terraced housing, the village
Post Office , and the village's sole chapel which is still in use.The village is Policed from Llanberis and has a dedicated
Community Beat Manager . (Searchable link included to identify the local Officer)History
The roots of the village are in the
19th century slate industry and was apparently built to house workers for the nearby Dinorwig slate quarry.As far as can be established the village developed around the village
smithy (yr efail in Welsh). The building housing the smithy still exists and was recently converted from a rather tumble down building into a cottage.The village's development may well have been also influenced by the quarry railway that ran between
Dinorwic Quarry andY Felinheli (or the unofficial English name ofPortdinorwic ) and skirted around the village and along the shore of the lake.It has been noted that on the 1933 1/2 inch
Ordnance Survey map of the area (Sheet 11) that the village is referred to as Bryn-yr-Efail and is still shown as so on the 1948 Revision of the same map.At one time the village was home to the
Ysgol Brynrefail before the campus was moved to the nearby village ofLlanrug in the 1960s. Strangely the school still retains the original name.The school's site was finally cleared in the 1990s and in 2002 work was commenced on a modern multi use centre called
Caban . Opened in 2004, Caban is a social enterprise and is home to a cafe, a meeting room which doubles as the village's chapel and 13 business units. The cafe is mentioned in theWhich? 2008Good Food Guide .Up until 1960 Fact|date=January 2008 the village's main street was the main road between
Caernarfon andLlanberis until it was by-passed by the existing road in order for very large machinery to be conveyed to the what was then the major construction site for theDinorwig Power Station . This split the village leaving the small Local Authorityhousing estate ofTrem Eilian effectively stranded on the other side of what has become a very busy main road.External links
* [http://www.caban-cyf.org/ Caban website]
* [http://www.north-wales.police.uk/nwpv2/en/home.asp North Wales Police]
* [http://www.geograph.org.uk/search.php?i=3499299 www.geograph.co.uk : photos of Brynrefail and surrounding area]
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