Nant Gwrtheyrn

Name: Nant Gwrtheyrn
Reason for desertion: unknown
Period of desertion: unknown

The Nant Gwrtheyrn Welsh Language and Heritage Centre inhabits a former quarrying village on the northern coast of the Llŷn Peninsula, Gwynedd, in northwest Wales. It is sometimes referred to as ‘the Nant’ and is named after the valley where it is located, Nant Gwrtheyrn (”Vortigern’s Creek”), which lies in isolation by the sea at the foot of Yr Eifl.

Nant Gwrtheyrn

The site was formerly a stone quarry and its community lived an isolated existence with limited contact with the outside world. The hillsides of the Nant testify, through their landscape scars and the ruins of quarry structures, to this former existence, especially hard in winter when storms drive in to the valley. After the quarry was closed, the cottages fell into disrepair and were occupied by hippies for a time. The site was the subject of several plans for redevelopment, including as an approved school, when it was acquired by a local trust set up to establish a Welsh language centre there.

When the Second World War broke out the Nant Quarry was shut for the last time, and one by one the families left. The 23 July 1948 edition of “Y Cymro” featured two photographs which told the whole story; one of John Roberts and his niece leaving their house in the Nant to live in Llithfaen; and the other of two of the Nant’s men packing the school’s furniture on a sledge to carry them up the hill. Two or three families of squatters moved into the empty houses in 1949 and the Education Committee reopened the school for a few years. But the days of a quarry community in the Nant were over.

Sources: http://www.acen.co.uk/nant/history.shtml