Colwyn Bay has a great beach, safe and clean with a long stretch of golden sand that can be enjoyed even at high tide. The town is part of the Wales Coast Path and a walk along Colwyn Bay's prom is an absolute must as it is great for a stroll and an ice cream and stretches over 3 miles running into neighbouring Rhos-on-Sea. – that is longer than Rio's Copacabana! Up in the woods above the town is the Welsh Mountain Zoo, with its origins in conservation and rare and endangered species. There are many fascinating creatures like Snow Leopards, Sumatran Tigers, Red Pandas, Meerkats, and many others.
Colwyn Bay is not an 'historical' town in the accepted sense of the word. We only need to go back to 1865 to find fields and woods sweeping down to the water's edge housing a few modest manors, farms, watermills, cottages, smithies and small hamlets. In 1865, the sale of the Pwllycrochan Estate at auction for building plots, resulted in the building of the new town as a fashionable 'watering place', to meet the increasing demand for marine residences from the industrial Midlands and North West. By 1901, the population had grown to 8,689, a mixture of English and Welsh people forming a bustling seaside community. The seaside resort has expanded to become the second-largest community and business centre in the north of Wales as well as the 14th largest in the whole of Wales with the urban statistical area, including Old Colwyn, Rhos-on-Sea, Mochdre and Penrhyn Bay, having a population of 34,284 at the 2011 census.
The crest of the small hill on Colwyn Bay promenade marks the former entrance to the Victoria Pier. It was conceived in the late 19th century, when Colwyn Bay wanted to catch up with other towns which had piers where steamers deposited and collected passengers. However, it was found that the proposed pier would have to extend almost 1km (about half a mile) to reach the area where the water was deep enough for ships. This was too costly, so the pier was built purely for entertainments and opened on the 1st of June 1900 to a length of 220 feet, including a 2500 seat pavilion. It was closed to the public for many years before a large part of the seaward end collapsed during a storm in February 2017. The structure was dismantled in 2018 and has now been replaced by a smaller truncated pier as a viewing area.
Rhos-on-Sea has a history associated with St Trillo and Ednyfed Fychan, a 13th century warrior and advisor to Llywelyn the Great who built a small castle here, where in the Iron Age a hill-fort once stood called Dinerth, the 'fort of the bear' and later still a manor house was constructed on the site. Bryn Euryn is a hill overlooking the town that is a popular walking area and viewpoint. The Holy Well and St Trillo's Chapel on the sea front is thought to be the smallest church in the British Isles with the 11 by 9 foot church only able to hold 6 people and can be dated back to the 6th century, the exact date is unknown. During its use there was a small well or spring in the chapel which provided fresh drinking water for St Trillo, as well as being used for baptisms and its healing properties. The well has a square shaped stone covering it but this can be moved to allow access to the holy spring. It has had lots of repairs during the years and is now gated, but still a massive glimpse into the past! St.Trillo was a saint from Brittany whose father was Kin Ithel Hael. He came to the site around 570 AD as a missionary with his two brothers, St Twrog and St Tegai and was a student of Saint Cadfan. It appears that Trillo lived as a hermit at this site sometime between 570 and 590 AD and when he passed away was buried at the holy land of Bardsey of the coast of Wales.
Rhos Fynach is now a pub and restaurant but centuries ago the monks from the great Cistercian monastery of Aberconwy at Maenan in the Conway Valley, had an orchard in their grounds. They were keen agriculturalists, and the Fynach was one of many outlying farms attached to the Abbey established by these Cistercian monks at the end of the twelfth century. A quantity of Roman coins were found here dating from the reign of Constantine The Great who was the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity ( from 306 to 337.) Some were discovered wrapped in sheets of lead in an old stone drain when a section of the Rhos Fynach's garden was being cleared for the construction of the Rhos Abbey Hotel in 1898. The Rhos Abbey Hotel existed until 1991 when it was demolished, and at the back there is now still an orchard where once there was a wonderful open air swimming pool. Legend has it that the buildings are haunted by a monk wearing a brown habit and white cloak. There was a medieval fishing weir near Rhos point, some remains of which can still be detected at low tide. The weir trapped salmon for centuries, and perhaps the successful fishing was why the monks had a small outpost here, where they could temporarily stay whilst maintaining the weir and collecting the fish. The weir was amazingly effective and enormous numbers of fish could sometimes be caught. For example in 1850 there was a record catch of 35,000 herring in a single night! The weir even trapped an 8 foot shark in 1865, which was put on display in Llandudno market. On another occasion in 1907 10 tons of mackerel were caught in a single tide.With a small beach, and a small harbour, according to legend, in the 12th century Prince Madog set sail from here and discovered America.
In the late Middle Ages, Colwyn Bay was the setting for an event of national importance in the history of England and Wales, the downfall of king Richard II. In mid-August 1399 Richard II, with his position critically weak, had bottled himself up in Conwy Castle and left the castle with a small retinue, but was ambushed at Penmaenhead, just east of Colwyn Bay, and then 'escorted' to Flint castle by his captors. He was then taken in stages to London, imprisoned in the Tower of London, and by the 29th of September he had been 'persuaded' to renounce the throne. This whole dramatic episode probably marks Colwyn Bay's most dramatic entry onto the stage of Britain’s history, and has not been equalled since.
The Cayley family was prominent landowners in Rhos on Sea, as well as in Yorkshire. There are several areas and roads with their name such as; the Cayley Promenade, the Cayley Arms pub, and the roads Brompton and Ebberston which were the estates in Yorkshire owned by the Cayley family. One member of the family, Sir George Cayley, was an eminent inventor. He designed a practical flying machine 50 years before the Wright brothers. In 1853 he built a machine that could carry the weight of a man. This glider, the 'Cayley Flier', paved the way for the Wright brothers' powered flight in 1903, as the Wrights acknowledged. The 'Cayley Flier' flew for about 275 metres across Brompton Dale, in Yorkshire before crash-landing. This was the first recorded flight in history in a fixed-wing aircraft, so it is fair to describe Sir George Cayley as the true inventor of the aeroplane. Sir George, 80 years old at the time, didn't risk flying the plane himself, ordering his coachman, John Daley, to fly it for him. After the alarming experience, the coachman promptly resigned.
The near-forgotten story of the African Training Institute in Colwyn Bay, known locally as the Congo House is also worth telling. The Reverend William Hughes preached in the Congo from 1882 until poor health forced him to return to Wales in 1885. He brought with him two students: Kinkasa and Nkansa, the Congo Boys, and in 1887 Mr Hughes, his wife and his African colleagues settled in Colwyn Bay where he established the Training Institute three years later. By 1903 more than 20 students from nations like Cameroon, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia and the United States were training at the Institute and by the time it closed more than 100 would have passed through its halls. One student, Davidson Don Tengo Jabavu, studied in Colwyn Bay before earning degrees from University College London and Birmingham and he would later return to Africa to set up the South African Native College at Fort Hare in the Cape Province. It was there he would teach a young Nelson Mandela. After a scandal in 1911 involving a Welsh girl bearing the child of one of the students, public opinion turned on the Reverend and his Institute, spearheaded by the populist magazine John Bull and editor Horatio Bottomley. Mr Hughes attempted to sue for libel in 1912, but financial issues led to the case being thrown out and the Reverend declared bankrupt. The Institute closed and its students scattered. Mr Hughes died in a workhouse in 1924, and was buried in Old Colwyn Cemetery alongside members of his family and those students who had died before him - including his first companions Kinkasa and Nkansa.
see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2022/05/lets-have-day-out-to-crosby.html
No comments:
Post a Comment