THE STORY OF TWO PARISHES

DOLGELLEY & LLANELLTYD

by T.P.ELLIS

XVIII.  MODERN DAYS.

 THE COMING OF THE RAILWAY-LOSS OF OLD TRADE DEPENDENCE ON LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER-THE INFLUX OF NEW SETTLERS-NEW DIFFICULTIES-THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL-DR. WILLIAMS' SCHOOL-MUSIC-PRINTING WORKS-THE PART PLAYED IN THE WAR-OTHER INSTITUTIONS-THE FUTURE OF DOLGELLEY THE BEAUTY OF THE PLACE-EPHEMERAL BLOTS NEED OF VISION.  

ANYONE who attempts to tell the story of the immediate past of any locality runs many risks. He may, in the first place, be guilty of omissions and lay himself open to all kinds of grievance felt if not expressed. He may also be guilty of acts of commission, colouring facts with his own preconceptions, and thereby fall foul of those who look on things differently. 

Hence, as this little volume is not polemical, the concluding chapter will attempt little in the way of history, and will leave untouched questions of politics and the like, whether national or local. It will be confined to just a few expressions which are, or should be, not really matters of controversy. The real dividing line between modern days and the past must be drawn with the extension of the railway to Dolgelley in the year 1868. The Cambrian Railway came a little earlier, and pushed a branch up to Dolgelley from Barmouth, with a station close to where Dr. Williams' School now stands; but it was in 1868 that the direct route eastwards was opened by the G.W.R. The coming of the railway, followed by the increased motor traffic, has completely revolutionised the land. 

The old trade, the old comity, have disappeared. No longer is there any manufacture of woollen webs; the " pandys " or fulling-mills survive only in name; all that is left is a reduced tanning industry. The days when Dolgelley was an important local centre the centre of an isolated find cut-off land-have passed away. The town and the people have been brought into the whirl of modern life, and the town is now, economically, little more than a depot for the farming community round about. Here they cling their sheep and cattle to sell, and buy whatever they need for the provisioning of the little homesteads which are still some way off the hustle of modern existence. 

Dolgelley is dependent largely on places like Liverpool and Manchester and its economic dependence on these large towns has not been altogether a good thing for the land. Not only does it depend on them economically, but it looks to them, to some extent, for those things which we call, in these days, cultural inspirations. 

The cultural inspirations of large manufacturing towns are not high; but even if they were, they are utterly foreign to, and, in effect, un-understandable by a people whose whole environment is that of the mountains and the countryside. The result is apt to be an unintelligent imitation: and irritation, which is always ugly, becomes more so when it imitates that which is inherently ugly in itself . 

Old Welsh story and tradition, old Welsh literature, things of intense beauty, are at a discount for a time; the cinema, the cheap newspaper, the rotten novel threaten to oust them altogether. 

Further, many strangers to the land, enchanted by its beauty, have made homes for themselves round about, some more or less permanently, still more for the fag end of a summer. Most of them know nothing and care nothing about the historic past, and lead a life detached, to a large extent, from that of the people among whom they dwell. To this there are fortunate exceptions : and if Welsh people are not voluble on the subject, they have a warm corner in their hearts for them. The Welsh people are a difficult people to understand, intensely difficult. They are not easy of approach; but many of them are remarkably responsive if an approach is made in the right way. 

Things are often looked at from a different standpoint : hence misunderstanding. Take. for instance, that phenomenon of Wales, the like of which you can find nowhere else-the age long connection with the land. Ancestries which go back to Glyndwr, and even beyond that,-I know of several which go to the Xllth century, and one, perhaps a little mythically, to 420 A.D.-result in a dignified pride, which no considerations of material greatness can diminish. 

Hence, for the time, we seem to have a difficult problem. Still, things are not quite so hopeless as people sometimes think they are, and the difficulties will pass away as time goes by. Assimilation will come in due course, if the spirit to assimilate be allowed to grow. It can be furthered largely by a study of exactly what the land has stood for in days gone by; still more if a sympathetic attitude be shown towards that very beautiful thing, the Welsh language, to which the Welsh people are so passionately attached. Wales stands, in its heart of hearts, for very much the same things now as in days gone by; obscured though the fact may he by the incursion of new ideas and new influences. 

Agencies are at work, even in this locality, to revive something of the spirit of the past, and to combine it, in so far as it can be combined, with the needs Of to-day, and a great deal could be done by other agencies.   

Mention has already been made of the old Grammar School, now brought under the Welsh Intermediate Schools' scheme, the success or reverse of which scheme it is rather too early to estimate. Of this school it is unnecessary to say more beyond that it is attempting to realise Dr. Ellis' dream, by giving the boys of the neighbourhood a good education, with some of its roots in the past. As more or less of a stranger to the immediate neighbourhood one may say that it would be difficult to find a higher standard of courtesy and manners than among the schoolboys of Dolgelley. This acquisition they have to carry with them into after-life, and it is just there that the rub comes in. 

In addition, Dolgelley possesses an excellent girls' school-probably the best school for girls in North Wales, which will celebrate its jubilee in 1928. 

The school is generally known as Dr. Williams' School; but he was not the actual founder of it, for he died in the year 1711. He was not a native of Dolgelley; but, at his death, he left a fund to be applied to the purposes of education in Wales. 

Part of this trust was devoted to the endowment of the Girls' School in Dolgelley, and hence its perfectly justifiable title. It also furnishes an excellent education to the girls of the neighbourhood and to many from over the border. 

Both schools do much to inspire some love of the Welsh past; and perhaps the generations to come will realise more and more the value of the story of days gone by. 

In music much has been done-in literature less, for no poet has been produced in the neighbourhood since Dafydd lonawr, a second-rate poet at the best, died a hundred years ago-by the Eisteddfod Meirion, established some 52 years ago through the instrumentality of Mr. O. O. Roberts, whose death in December, 1926, robbed the' countryside of an exceedingly fine spirit. Another Eisteddfod, the Eisteddfod y Gweithwyr, is also held in March in the town, and another in the summer at Llanelltyd. It would be well if these were combined into one; the division leads or tends to lead to a lowering of the general standard. 

Dolgelley also possesses various printing works, which are responsible for the production of various church and chapel periodicals, and even for a weekly paper in Welsh. The periodicals have a great vogue in Wales; and occasionally books are printed and produced in the town. 

These things are not spectacular; but the day of spectacular achievements is past. It is only steady, applied grind that is of any use to-day, and the War has rather shaken the power to grind. One would like to see more effort; more support, for instance, given to societies like the Cymmrodorion and the Cambrian Archaeological, the equipment of a decent library (some efforts are being made in this direction through the County Libraries' scheme), the formation of a local county historical society, for herein the neighbourhood falls far behind the rest of Wales. 

Still more one would like to see a weakening in the besetting sin of Wales,-a little more tolerance, less grasping after and holding on to power, less jealousy of the expert, and fewer "rings." Some mention of the part played in the Great War is needed. Both Nannau and Caerynwch, the homes of General Vaughan and Major Richards, were generously placed at the disposal of war hospitals, wherein shattered men recovered something of their lost strength; and the work of the British Legion carries on some of the spirit of those days, so well, indeed, that in 1926 the Women's Section captured Lord Haig's Gold Cup for the most efficient section in Great Britain. 

Quiet work of this sort, done by both English and Welsh residents. makes no great outward show, but it is, nevertheless of inestimable use. 

In the war, 107 men of Dolgelley and Llanelltyd gave their lives for the Empire and for Wales, not a bad record -for two parishes, whose united population is not more than 2,500, man, woman and child. A memorial to them stands in the centre of the town. 

Other institutions, like the hospital and the institute, contribute to the welfare of the town, and on the whole, though there is much to be done by future generations, Dolgelley is fairly well alive to the needs of the day. 

What is the future of Dolgelley? Industrially, it has apparently little future. The quarrying and gold-seeking, spasmodically attempted, can do little but deface the land in patches, and though electric developments in years to come may have something to say to the neighbourhood, they can do little for a land which depends in the main upon its pastoral occupations. 

Its future lies almost entirely upon the use to which the incomparable beauty of its natural surroundings can be put. 

Therein lies its real wealth. In natural beauty the neighbourhood is unsurpassed in Britain. It grows upon one day by day; and whether it be summer or winter, spring or autumn, it is always. here, yet never the same.  

The old Welsh enthroned Light, the son of the Morning Mist, upon the summit of Cader Idris; and the imagination that did so is perhaps the most poetic tribute that has ever been paid to the land. 

This is not a guide-book; hence no description of this beauty is attempted. In fact, no writing could describe it. Crag-strewn mountain and peaceful valley, rushing rivers and lakes with ever-changing surfaces, woodland and wide bare spaces, tumbling waterfalls and secluded pools, the delight of fish and poachers, are all here, with the sea close at hand. The colouring of the land, changing with the changing seasons, is so enchanting and fugitive that even the greatest artists give up the task of capturing so much as a transient fragment of it in despair. There is an old Welsh saying, now almost forgotten, that God made Wales first, and with what of beauty He had left He made the rest of the world. In the great scheme of things, if that be true, the beginning must have been made in Merioneth. 

It is in the preservation of this wonderful beauty that the future of Dolgelley and Llanelltyd lies 

Sometimes it seems threatened by the lopping of trees, the erection of gaily-coloured tin sheds, the failure to keep the roads and bridges free of scattered paper, the burning of town refuse in far too conspicuous sites, the pollution of the streams with rubbish, and the lumber of ruined and unsightly buildings. These defects, serious enough in their way, one hopes are ephemeral. Once the fact is realised that natural beauty is Dolgelley's wealth they may be swept away, and our local fathers, in the future, may, perhaps, make it a part of their duty to see that defacements of the land are rigorously' suppressed. 

Vision, a wider vision than prevails to-day, is wanted; a vision which can see beyond the immediate present into the future. With the knowledge that we are the inheritors of a beautiful land and a past, not without inspiration, the future is secure.