Llandygai

In 1648 during the English Civil War the Battle of Y Dalar Hir was fought near Llandygai. Royalist forces of 150 horse and 120 foot soldiers led by Sir John Owen engaged Parliamentarian forces led by Colonel Carter and Colonel George Twistleton. The village of Llandygai is recorded at the beginning of the nineteenth century as consisting of eight or nine houses. The village was later developed by quarry owner The 1st Baron Penrhyn (1800–1886) as a ‘model village’ for his estate workers, in which ‘no corrupting alehouse’ was permitted. The model village was built within the loop of the road to Conwy from where it branched off Telford’s newly built Holyhead to London road. Each house was…

The model village, within the loop of the former line of the A55 road, retains much of its original character, despite some more recent additions, having been declared a conservation area in 1974. The Holyhead to Chester railway passes by the village through the Llandygai Tunnel, which is 442 yards in length, before emerging onto the Ogwen Viaduct to the east of the village.