IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
View Terrace, CAERNARFON, LL55 3LB

Thanks to Dave's salami slicing tactics the cash strapped Gwynedd Council has decided to put many of its village public toilets on sale. This at Deiniolen is one of them. The village's war time air raid shelter previously stood on this spot.

Now a glaziers' workshop, this building was the village cinema between 1952 and the coming of television (snowy pictures from the Holme Moss transmitter) around 1959. The roof was of corrugated iron and a shower of rain would effectively drown out the film, not that it was easy to hear much over the riot that would be going on inside. I spent hours here watching such films as 'Abbot and Costello Meet the Ghosts' and 'The Mario Lanza Story'.

The site has been cleared for redevelopment. After its closure the old cinema had been converted into a glazier's workshop. That company has now moved its base to Caernarfon. Image

This is the last surviving public house in the Deiniolen area.

The chapel on the left is Ebenezer Independent Chapel. Until the 1920s, the village was known as Ebenezer. The mountains in the background are Elidir Fach and, peeping above it, Elidir Fawr.

One of only two public houses in the area to survive the 1904-05 Religious Revival. It, like the Wellington Inn Image, is situated in the centre of the village. In the 1950s, Friday evenings, and especially the 'Fridays of the Great Pay Count' (Gwener Cyfrif Mawr) when the quarrymen received their monthly bonus, used to be the evenings of heavy drinking. Even then, the pubs closed at 9 p.m. Before they took to religion, a trend enthusiastically endorsed by the quarry owners, it was not uncommon for slate quarrymen - including my great-grandfather - to go on 'spree' lasting a full week following the bonus paying day.

A side street leading north from the High Street. The entrance used to be much narrower, but was widened by demolishing the end house on the left. A track at the end of the lane leads on to the moor.

'Capal Eban', as it is known locally, is a Welsh Independent Chapel. It was built initially in 1823 at a time when, under the stimulus of the development of the Dinorwig Slate Quarry, the village of Deiniolen was growing rapidly. Indeed, until 1923, when the name Deiniolen was adopted, the village was officially called Ebenezer. Image

Capel Ebenezer (Capal Eban) is the large building on the right.

Quarrymen's cottages in Llanddeiniolen