Friday 9th July 1819
Friday July 9th This morning after breakfast we advanced towards Tanybwlch the same road for 7 miles that we had transversed the day before which is most beautiful, we now caught constant glances of Snowden
which looked more like itself than when we had viewed it from the top Cader Idris the country becomes more picturesque towards Tanybwlch which has more the appearance of a gentleman’s seat than an Inn, it being a nice looking house with no cottages near it but most beautiful woods encircle it all around. My brothers went out fishing in the evening
OBSERVATIONS & COMMENTS:
Tan y Bwlch today lies in the Snowdonia National Park in North Wales and is primarily known as the location of Tan-y-Bwlch railway station, on the narrow gauge Ffestiniog Railway, which was built in 1836 to carry dressed slate from Blaenau Ffestiniog to Porthmadog for export by sea.
The estate that encompassed Tan y Bwlch goes back to at least the 16th century when Ieuan ap Iorwerth ap Adda began acquiring land near Ffestiniog. The family claimed descent from Collwyn ap Tangno, one of the legendary 12 Tribes of Gwynedd. The first written record of the estate comes in 1602 in the will of Robert Evans. Robert's grandson Evan became Sheriff of Meirioneth in 1634, and was probably responsible for building the first house here. In the 18th century the house passed by marriage to the Griffith family, and in 1748 Robert Griffith rebuilt and enlarged the mansion. In 1789 the estate passed by marriage again to William Oakley of Shropshire.
1777: The Vale of Tan y Bwlch by Francis Towne and in the collection of the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff (NMWA3150, acquired January 1936). http://francistowne.ac.uk/collection/list-of-works/the-vale-of-tan-y-bwlch
Tan y Bwlch - etching by John Sell Cotman (1782–1842) from the Tate Britain Collection (T11500) and licensed under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND (3.0 Unported) https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/cotman-tan-y-bwlch-merionethshire-north-wales-t11500
The two images above represent the estate in the years before and during the time the Coplands passed through and admired the scenery. https://www.britainexpress.com/attractions.htm?attraction=781 and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tan-y-Bwlch,_Maentwrog
Appearance of a Gentleman’s seat: The Coplands found the scenery more and more picturesque as they progressed toward the Tan y Bwlch Inn, prompting Lucy’s observation that the estate had more the appearance of a “Gentleman’s seat”. The arrival of William Oakeley in 1789 had heralded prosperous times for the estate which had grown substantially through marriage settlement and inheritance. William Oakeley was a popular man, known locally as ‘Oakeley Fawr’ (Great Oakeley). He is said to have been able to speak Welsh but it is likely that he only learnt it after marrying his Welsh wife. He is most noted for improving the poor agricultural land in the valley below the Plas. Farming was the main livelihood in the area at this time but because the valley was a tidal estuary, the agricultural land was very poor. He carried out a major scheme to improve the land by building nearly a mile of embankments costing £309, equivalent to £21,854 today. This work helped to contain the river when water levels rose. https://www.snowdonia.gov.wales/study-centre/history
Tan y Bwlch Inn was an integral part of the nearby Tan y Bwlch Estate, from whih it took its name. Today it is known as the Oakley Arms Hotel and would have been grand when compared to many Welsh Inns at the time.
2017: Front view of the Oakeley Arms Hotel in Maentwrog by Markz55 and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Oakeley_Arms_Hotel.jpg
Some local records claim that the hotel was built on the original site of the estate’s manor house (now located ¼ mile west and called Plas Tan-y-Bwlch). The inn was first built in the 1600s but was extended during the 1700s when it was owned by a local drover. In his 1778 book A Tour in Wales, it was described by writer and traveller Thomas Pennant as “a very neat small inn, for the reception of travellers who ought to think themselves much indebted to a nobleman, for the great improvement it received from his munificence ”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakeley_Arms_Hotel
Can you help us?
Old Regency Prints, Pictures an Coaching maps: Do you have access to any prints or pictures showing what town and country would have looked like when Lucy travelled through? Any illustrations of what she would have seen in 1819 will enliven our research.
New Pictures: Do you have any modern pictures of the streets, buildings, gardens and views that would enable us to see the changes that two centuries have wrought?