IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Penmaenpool, DOLGELLAU, LL40 1YB

Penmaenuchaf Hall is a hotel and also rents out rooms for day meetings. The garden is terraced into the steep hillside on the south shore of the Mawddach estuary and lies to the east of the main building.

At the end of the terraced formal garden, a small staircase leads down to a more park-ish section of the garden.

Penmaenuchaf Hall lies some fifty metres above the Mawddach estuary just west of Dolgellau. The hall is now run as a hotel and also rents out meeting rooms for day visitors. Here, a few delegates of the Cafmad postgraduate conference enjoy the gardens during a break in the proceedings. Cafmad, the Centre for Advanced Materials and Devices, is a joint undertaking of Aberystwyth (physics) and Bangor (chemistry and electrical engineering) Universities, but the topography of Wales means that it's often best to meet somewhere in the middle.

Penmaenuchaf Hall, now a country house hotel http://www.penhall.co.uk , is situated on the south side of the Mawddach estuary above Penmaenpool, three miles west of Dolgellau in the county of Gwynedd. It is a large, grey stone, gabled, Victorian country house of two storeys with attic dormers. According to Cadw, Charles Reynolds Williams, bought Penmaenuchaf estate from Revd. John Harvey Ashworth of Kensington in 1865. Other records show that by 1873 Penmaenuchaf was occupied by Thomas Taylor (1799-1876), who was a wealthy cotton mill owner from Bolton. When Thomas Taylor died, Penmaenuchaf passed to his son and heir John Leigh Taylor who was also involved in the family cotton spinning business. For a period of time Penmaenuchaf was anglicised as "The Cliffe" and there evidence to suggest that this was the case until the 1890s. However, by the turn of the century, the property is referred to as "Penmaenucha" in various conveyances, deeds and the 1901 census. The 1901 census return for Penmaenuchaf also records that the hall was well staffed with fourteen members of staff listed including a butler, housekeeper, gamekeeper, coachman, servants and gardeners. Penmaenuchaf remained in the ownership of the same family until 1978 when it was sold to Rite and Gavin Miller from Cardiff http://homepage.ntlworld.com/judy.whitby/penmaenucha/pen%20toc.htm. They lovingly restored Penmaenuchaf which was in need of repair having gradually fallen into disuse and decline. When they retired in 1989, Penmaenuchaf was acquired by hoteliers Mark Watson and Lorraine Fielding who completed a sympathetic conversion of the building into a luxurious country house hotel and to this day that remains the building's use.

This OS cut mark can be found on the wall NE side of the road. It marks a point 5.758m above mean sea level.

The Mawddach Trail heading west towards Penmaenpool.

The road, also a public footpath, is descending towards Penmaenpool.

A lamb and its mum in a field off the Mawddach Trail near Penmaenpool.

These fields were covered by the tide until the middle of the 19th century, when farmers transformed the land into pasture by building a wall and carrying soil onto the land by horse & cart. The wall was breached in 1926 and were not reclaimed until 1978 when the tidal defence wall was rebuilt. It is extremely fertile land used for grazing and silage.