The Lost Cottages - Rhiwddolion, Betws-y-Coed, Conwy Valley

The abandoned quarrying village of Rhiwddolion sits up in the hills above Betws y Coed in the Conwy Valley. In its heyday, the mid nineteenth century, the place boasted a number of clustered houses and a chapel which doubled as a school, all serving a small community of quarry workers. Now almost all the buildings are in ruin, with only a few surviving intact, including the chapel, as holiday cottages. The main terrace of houses can be found at Ordnance Survey grid reference SH 7697 5571. It's hard to find information online about this place, but there is a little more history on this Daily Post page. 

This is a good walk from the valley, but it may be possible to drive much closer by using the forestry tracks that snake about the hills in that area. We were made nervous by not being sure which roads had public access, and tales of people becoming lost in the maze of roadways. If you drove up, the walk would be fairly easy, along a metalled road and across a field. Our route, along a footpath starting at a housing estate in Betws y Coed (Ordnance Survey: SH 7805 5662), took us up a fairly steep route of grassy and rocky tracks, including the Roman Road of Sarn Helen, before we met the gravel forestry tracks.

The Roman Road of Sarn Helen is named after the Welsh Saint Elen. In its time the road would have connected Aberconwy in the north with Carmarthen in the south-west.

Beautiful slate walls dripping with moss line the edges of the road. 

The first glimpse of Rhiwddolion, over a lovely flower filled meadow. The footpath cuts across this way towards the house in the distance, or you can continue on the road to the left. 

One of the houses on the hill, either occupied or used as a holiday cottage. It has the look of a farmhouse, unlike the other restored houses here, which are owned by the Landmark Trust. The ruined houses are visible on the left. 

Facades of the abandoned terrace of houses. It's hard to imagine them roofed and rendered, with people coming and going and children playing. 

Looking through the window into the room behind. Slate beams mean entrances and windows tend to survive longer than those with wooden beams.

A fireplace almost obscured by rubble from the fallen walls. Again, the heavy slate beam has survived much better than wood would, once exposed to the elements.

Another fireplace on the first floor, presumably heating a bedroom and using the same chimney as the larger fireplace downstairs. 

Ferns overtaking the ruins. 

A vast crack in one of the facades. 

Another fireplace with a rather lovely curved slate beam. 

This house stands separately from the little terrace, but very close to it. It seems of a higher status than the cramped cottages. 

When these slate walls fall they seem to fall as one, reproducing the wall again on the ground. 

Looking down into one of the houses from a little rise of land. 

Another first floor fireplace, this time with the bricks still in place.

The chimney stack above, still with render on it. 

I'm guessing the floor level has risen here, rather than this being a fireplace for the pobl bach (the Welsh fairy folk). 

Another collapsed wall in perfect formation. 

There are a number of these little outhouses behind the terrace, nested in the side of the hill. 

The outhouses truly are built into the hill, resembling entrances into some kind of mysterious underground labyrinth.

Looking through into the big house from behind. 

Another cottage on the other side of the road. 

The track leading past the cottages and away into the hills. 

I wonder if this house is independent of, and maybe older than, the quarry village. It reminds me forcefully of the farmhouse my husband grew up in, which was much older than the quarry houses.

A small outbuilding with another collapsed wall. 

This outbuilding is in good repair, but it looks like it's mostly used by sheep. 

A rusty tedder, once used for turning hay during the drying process. It would have been useful to have one of these when we tried our hand at haymaking. Turning with a pitchfork is back breaking work. 

A little stone bridge over to two of the Landmark Trust houses, set some way apart from the terrace. 

This house may give a better impression of what the other houses looked like originally. 

The same house from the front. A very simple single storey structure, familiar in the Welsh hills. 

Just up the hill is another of the Landmark Trust houses. 

More ruins on the track from the Landmark Trust, much more redolent of those low, long buildings than of the terrace on the hill. 

Very little is left of these houses. 

I think this is the chapel/school building, also owned and rented by the Landmark Trust as a holiday cottage, but I didn't feel comfortable going down to see the front in case the place was inhabited. 

For the benefit of those hoping to walk up from the small Betws housing estate we started from, this is the entrance to the footpath.