The Friar’s Island stands precisely in the mouth of the river, and ferries are established at the channels on each side; these once passed, a ride of one mile over the firm sands reaches the road to Towyn, which is carried along the front of a bold headland hanging over the sea, less beautiful, but equally bold as the old road round the brow of Penmaen Mawr.
[Picture: Tre Madoc; Harlech Castle; Castel Goch or Welch Pool. London. Published by T. T. & J. Tegg, Cheapside, Oct. 1st 1832]
There was a military station on the summit of Dinas Gortin, and close to the town stood a tower, in which the Earl of Richmond used to conceal himself, upon his visits to his confederates in this part of Wales. Its strength is celebrated in a poem, written at that period, in which it is also compared with Reinault’s tower near Mold.
A VILLAGE on the western side of the estuary called the Traeth Mawr, in the promontory of Llyn and county of Caernarvon. It stands on a surface three feet lower than the level of the sea, from the invasion of which it is protected by a substantial embankment. A handsome church ornamented with a tower and spire, and approached through an arched way of exquisite workmanship; a spacious market-house, with assembly rooms in the upper story; a large inn and several good houses, all placed in well chosen and regular positions, indicate the taste of the founder, and excite a feeling of regret that his well directed exertions in excluding the sea were not ultimately better rewarded. The place derives its name from the late W. A. Madocks, Esq., a man of the most courtly, popular manners, and possessed of a penetrating and clear discernment. His first design of enclosing the ground on which the town is built proving successful, led him on to the greater but less happy attempt, that of embanking some thousand acres of the Traeth Mawr, by a sea wall from Caernarvon to Merionethshire. To secure, and place the validity of his title beyond future question, he obtained a grant from the crown in 1807 of all the sands from Pont Aberglaslyn to the point of Gêst. Across the sea-end of this space, and where the breadth was about one mile, he carried an embankment, in deep water, having a breadth of one hundred feet at the base and of thirty at the top. The material of which it is formed is rubble stone, formerly imbedded in loose earth, which was readily detached by the water and entirely carried away, leaving innumerable apertures for the ebb and flow of the tide. This unfortunate error might have been corrected by puddling or some other means; but the breadth of the embankment is still too trifling for the depth and force of the sea. The tide pours in rapidly through every part of this expensive work, presenting a calamitous picture of the projector’s losses, while the dam that secures the town will probably see generations rise and fall on one side, like the fluctuation of the waters from which it protects them on the other.