Abandoned UK village being reclaimed by nature is ‘vast, wild and fascinating’ | UK | News

In the far western reaches of the UK is a small village home to around 2,000 people. Other than being surrounded by outstanding natural beauty on all sides, it appears at first glance to be fairly unremerkable and no different from hundreds of other villages around the country. 

But where this village differs from almost all others is that this is not its original location. In fact, it was moved here wholesale from a location a little to the east around a century ago. The ruins of its original site, including cottages and even a villa, can still be seen and one explorer has gone as far as describing the site as a « Welsh Angkor Wat ».

The clearance of entire communities in Wales to create reservoirs to supply England’s urban centres with water still provokes an emotional reaction in Wales to this day. Perhaps the most famous of all these is the village of Capel Celyn, which was cleared of people then flooded to create a reservoir to supply water to Liverpool. 

But water wasn’t the only reason villages were relocated or erased altogether. The rapid growth of the slate industry in the 19th century also affected entire communities, each with their own identity and culture. And one such village was Talysarn, which found itself in the wrong place as slate mining expanded across Snowdonia in north-west Wales. Over time, a patchwork of small quarries in the Dyffryn Nantlle valley were sucked into larger operations like the mighty Dorothea quarry, which was so significant that it is now a World Heritage Site. 

Whether modern acknowledgement of its globally-important status would be of any consolation to the villagers forced from their homes and moved a kilometre west is questionable. But they laid down new roots and the village remains a bastion of the Welsh language, just as it was in the early 20th century. in 1927, the village’s road was also shifted south, though traces of what is known locally as Yr Hen Lon (Welsh for « the old road ») are still visible.

Some of the old village buildings remained in use by the quarry and their ruins can still be seen today. They included Plas Talysarn, a country house built in the 18th century and later expanded into a Victorian villa. 

The impressive site attracts visitors from far and wide. One such visitor is photographer Tony Harnett, who runs the Gems of Snowdonia website highlighting the “hidden treasures” of the national park. Tony shared his pictures with North Wales Live and said he was shocked by what he found at Dorothea.

“I’d seen photos of Plas Talysarn and knew it was an interesting place,” he said. “But I thought that’s all there was. When I went there, I did not expect to find so many other old buildings in the area. Some I just stumbled across, others I could see in the distance but didn’t have time to visit. I arrived late in the day, for the golden hour for photography, so I only had two hours there. But I could easily have stayed for the whole day, there’s so much to explore. ”

Photographer and author of Wild Guide Wales, Daniel Start, has described what remains today of the ruins as being like a « Welsh Angkor Wat ».

« Only the baboons are missing, » he writes. « It’s a vast, wild site with many fascinating, overgrown ruins, including a Cornish beam engine and the overgrown remains of the chapel at Plas Talysarn. »

In its heyday, the grand home of Plas Talysarn was quite something. It had a fountain, built as a 21st birthday present for the daughter of its owners, the Robinson family, who came and went via stagecoaches. Behind the house is an old track that used to be the old Nantlle horse tramway (horses continued to be used until the early 1960s). This now has a bridge to nowhere leading to more walled enclosures.

Nearby was a large lodge house and a further collection of buildings. What’s left of one structure is thought to be a gothic chapel or folly. In the damp woodland, all are blanketed with moss and draped in vines, with graffiti adding to the sense of abandonment.

Plas Talysarn stayed in the Robinson family until 1905, when it was sold to the quarry company. Locals recall that it was last occupied in 1946, finally being abandoned when a landslip brought Dorothea too close for comfort.

Nearby is the entrance to what was once a stable block and kennels, later modified to a shower block for the quarrymen. There is also a former boiler house with its roof largely gone, though two deteriorated Lancashire boilers remain.

Other neighbouring buildings are covered in moss and tree roots. Like many other quarry pits, production dropped significantly after the start of the Second World War. The quarry was eventually closed in 1970. Dorothea Quarry has long since flooded with the lake more than 100m deep in places. The site is now part of the Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales World Heritage Site, which was announced by Unesco in July 2021.

This story goes back 500 million years to the forming of a long belt of Cambrian slate between two valleys in north Wales. Some of the largest and most productive slate quarries in the world were situated along this belt and the region was said to have « roofed the 19th century world ». Slate was to north Wales what coal was to the south. 

There were lots of small and separate quarries in the area owned by numerous landowners. Amalgamations and takeovers over time created larger quarries like Dorothea, which opebned in 1820 and remained in production until 1970. By the 1840s, the major production levels at Dorothea looked good for the future but it was facing serious flooding problems and in 1884 several men were drowned when the pit was engulfed.

As the quarries of the Nantlle Valley continued to grow it was decided that the village of Talysarn would be relocated to the west where it remains today and is home to just under 2,000 people.

In January 1982, a couple living near Talysarn noticed suspicious activity in the red phone box opposite their house. At the time, detectives and other agencies were trying to locate those responsible for the burning of holiday homes in Wales.

When Eifionwen and Moses Edwards saw two strangers in a white car appearing on three occasions near their home overlooking the phone box on January 6, 1982, their curiosity was aroused and they saw the two men putting something in the phone box.

They waited until they went away and then went to investigate. Moses Edwards, speaking to journalists at the time, said he found something like a walkie talkie in the box: « Something like a policeman would use, » he said.

But as he returned to his home, the car returned along the country lane at speed.

« One of the men got out and said ‘I’ll take it back. I’m working for the GPO’, » he said. At the time, the GPO (General Post Office) were responsible for telephone services in Britain. But Mr Edwards didn’t believe him and when local police officers tried to trace the car’s registration number they were blocked from doing so by the Home Office. Lord Dafydd Wigley, who was the local MP at the time, previously recalled the saga saying the men « claimed to be telephone engineers » but said they were actually « secret agents [who] were not associated with the local constabulary [and were] acting without authority ».