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

In the far west of the United Kingdom lies a small village of approximately 2,000 people. Although it is surrounded by extraordinary natural beauty on all sides, at first glance it seems quite ordinary and no different from hundreds of other villages in the country.

But what makes this village different from almost all others is that this is not its original location. In fact, it was moved here wholesale from a place a little further east about a century ago. Remnants of the original site, including cottages and even a villa, can still be seen, and one explorer went so far as to describe the site as the “Welsh Angkor Wat”.

Entire communities in Wales created reservoirs to supply water to England’s urban centres, causing an emotional response in Wales even today. Perhaps the most famous of these is the village of Capel Celyn, which was cleared of people and then flooded to create a reservoir to supply water to Liverpool.

However, water was not the only reason why villages were moved or completely erased. 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, Talysarn, found itself in the wrong place as slate mining expanded in Snowdonia in north-west Wales. Over time, a patchwork of small quarries in the Dyffryn Nantlle valley were absorbed into larger operations such as the massive Dorothea quarry; This quarry was so important that it has now become a World Heritage Site.

It is doubtful whether modern acknowledgment of its globally significant status will be any consolation to the villagers who were forcibly evicted from their homes and moved a kilometer west. But they have established new roots and the village remains a stronghold of the Gaelic language, just as it was in the early 20th century. In 1927 the village’s road was also moved south, but traces of the road known locally as Yr Hen Lon (Gaelic for “old road”) are still visible.

The ruins of some old village buildings remaining in the quarry can still be seen today. These included Plas Talysarn, a country house built in the 18th century and later converted into a Victorian villa.

The impressive site attracts visitors from far and wide. One of these visitors is photographer Tony Harnett, who manages the gallery. Jewels of Snowdonia website highlights the “hidden treasures” of the national park. Tony shared his photos Via North Wales Live and said he was shocked by what he found in Dorothea.

“I had seen photos of Plas Talysarn and knew it was an interesting place,” he said. “But I thought that was all. When I got there, I didn’t expect to find so many old buildings in the area. Some I came across by chance, while others I could see from afar but didn’t have time to visit. I arrived late in the day for the golden hour to take photos, so I only had two hours there. But I could easily have stayed all day, there is so much to discover.”

Photographer and writer Wild Guide WalesDaniel Start said that what remains of the ruins today resembles the “Welsh Angkor Wat”.

“Only the baboons are missing,” he writes. “This is a large, wild area with many fascinating, overgrown ruins, including a Cornish beam engine and the overgrown remains of the chapel at Plas Talysarn.”

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

Nearby was a large boarding house and another collection of buildings. What remains of a structure is thought to be a gothic chapel or folly. In the damp woodland, everything is covered with moss and vines, and graffiti adds to the feeling of abandonment.

Plas Talysarn remained in the Robinson family until 1905, when it was sold to the quarrying company. Locals remember that it was last occupied in 1946, when it was finally abandoned when a landslide brought Dorothea too close for comfort.

Nearby is the entrance to what was once a stable block and kennels, later converted into a shower block for quarry workers. There is also an old boiler room with the roof mostly gone, but two broken-down Lancashire boilers remain.

Other neighboring buildings are covered in moss and tree roots. Like many other quarries, production fell significantly after the start of the Second World War. The quarry was eventually closed in 1970. Dorothea Quarry has long been flooded with a lake more than 100 meters deep in places. This area is now part of the Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales World Heritage Site, which was declared by Unesco in July 2021.

This story dates back to 500 million years ago, when a long belt of Cambrian slate formed between two valleys in North Wales. Some of the world’s largest and most productive slate quarries were located in this belt, and the region was said to “form the framework of the 19th century world”. Slate was to North Wales what coal was to the south.

There were many small and separate quarries in the area, owned by numerous landowners. Over time, mergers and acquisitions created larger quarries such as Dorothea, which opened in 1820 and remained in production until 1970. By the 1840s, main production levels at Dorothea looked good for the future, but it was facing serious flooding problems and in 1884 several men drowned as the pit was swallowed.

As the quarries in the Nantlle Valley continued to grow, it was decided to move the village of Talysarn to the west, where it remains today and is home to fewer than 2,000 people.

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

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

They waited until he was gone and then went to investigate. Speaking to reporters at the time, Moses Edwards said he found something resembling a walkie-talkie in the box: “It’s the kind of thing a police officer would use,” he said.

However, when he returned home, the car sped back down the village road.

“One of the guys came out and said, ‘I’ll take this back. I work for the GPO,'” he said. At the time, the GPO (General Post Office) was responsible for telephone services in Britain. But Mr Edwards did not believe him and when local police officers tried to find the car’s registration number they were prevented from doing so by the Home Office. Lord Dafydd Wigley, the local MP at the time, recalled that he had previously said that these men “claimed to be telephone engineers” but were actually “secret agents”. [who] was not associated with the local police department [and were] Acting without authority.”