Campbell's Platform
Perched high in the foothills of Moelwyn Bach with views across to the Rhinogydd and down the Dwyryd is an imposing house surrounded by the Maentwrog Nature Reserve with a private platform onto the Ffestiniog Railway. It’s ancient and one of the oldest inhabited houses in Wales, dating back to the fifteenth century, and was home to the Llwyd family for more than three hundred years. As with many minor nobles they could trace their descent from Llywelyn Fawr and have left their marks on the house with attempts to carve Ll into oak window sills.
The core of the building is a hall house which would have been open from the slate slab floor through to the rafters. Today this is the dining hall, with a fireplace big enough to roast an ox in, and above it a magnificent oak truss bedroom with cruck beams joined by wooden pegs.
Most houses have a modern extension and this is no exception. Connected to the front of the original building there is another much taller house built in 1630.
It’s just as well the Llwyds built the extension, as they soon received unexpected guests in the form of Cromwell’s officers who were billeted here during the siege of Harlech (1647) whilst their troops were accommodated in the valley below. The cellar beneath the new house was also used to secure prisoners overnight on their way to the gaol at Ffestiniog.
The name of the house is Plas y Dduallt, a bit of a mouthful for novice Welsh speakers, but a name which translates simply to ‘House on the Black Hillside’. The estate agent referred to some outcrops of black rock, but we’ve since been told the name alludes to things more sinister … in days gone by people would do anything to avoid walking past the house after nightfall. What with Coed y Bleiddiau (Forest of the Wolves!) a few minutes away … one’s imagination can run riot.
As well as running their estate, rumour has it that the Llwyds of Dduallt went in for cattle rustling from the Drovers. There was also a trace of insanity running through the family, and the family tree in ‘Griffith’s Pedigrees’ refers to several offspring with the single word ‘idiot’. The Llwyds continued to own Dduallt until the mid nineteenth century, when according to a local chronicler, ‘due to the habit the Welsh had, of excessive litigation, the family fell upon hard times’.