The Ugly House

This is the Ugly House on the outskirts of Betws-y-Coed in North Wales. I think it is cute not ugly and is now a cafe which is a welcoming site after walking or biking in the Gwydyr Forest.

A little history:

Some legends say it was built by robbers and thieves, taking advantage of travellers on the old A5 as they journeyed through Snowdonia – ugly people that gave the house a fearsome reputation. Others say the name is a corruption of the name of the river burbling away on the other side of the road, the Llugwy which flows from near Ogwen to join the river Conwy. Or maybe it’s the big, crude boulders that give the house its name – the word ‘hyll’ in Welsh can mean rough or crude, as well as ugly. The Ugly House is known as Tŷ Hyll in Welsh.

No one really knows who built the house. Some myths say the house was built overnight – a ‘tŷ unnos’ or ‘one night house’. With four walls and a chimney smoking by dawn, the builder could claim it as his own. The house was certainly built before we had machines and diggers. It may have been a robbers’ hideout in the 15th century, or Irish labourers constructing Telford’s bridge over the Llugwy could have built it for shelter in 1820. It was not mentioned by travel writers until 1853 and could simply be a Victorian folly, a romantic attraction for the increasing numbers of visitors to Snowdonia.

It would have taken a lot of manpower to move the stones and put them in place, possibly rolling them up earth banks using logs from the woods. By the mid-19th century the skills to manoeuvre such huge boulders would have been readily available among Welsh quarrymen, expertly tilting them out to stop rain entering the house and, with no mortar, plugging gaps in the thick walls with moss to block out the draught. The stones could be from the rock face above or taken from a local quarry.