Llanuwchllyn () is a village and

community A community is a social unit (a group of people) with a shared socially-significant characteristic, such as place, set of norms, culture, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given g ...

Gwynedd Gwynedd () is a county in the north-west of Wales. It borders Anglesey across the Menai Strait to the north, Conwy, Denbighshire, and Powys to the east, Ceredigion over the Dyfi estuary to the south, and the Irish Sea to the west. The ci ...

, Wales, near the southern end of Bala Lake (Llyn Tegid). It is one of the most sparsely populated communities in Wales. The electoral ward includes the small settlement of Llangywer. The parish church of St Deiniol is a Grade II* listed building. Llanuwchllyn railway station is the headquarters of the

narrow gauge A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge (distance between the rails) narrower than . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with Minimum railw ...

Bala Lake Railway The Bala Lake Railway ( Welsh: ''Rheilffordd Llyn Tegid'') is a narrow-gauge railway along the southern shore of Bala Lake in Gwynedd, North Wales. The line, which is long, is built on a section of the former standard-gauge Ruabon–Barmouth ...

, centred on the former

Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a History of rail transport in Great Britain, British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, ...

station on the standard-gauge line from

Ruabon Ruabon (; ) is a village and community in Wrexham County Borough Wrexham County Borough () is a Principal areas of Wales, county borough, with city status in the United Kingdom, city status, in the North East Wales, north-east of Wales. I ...

Barmouth Barmouth (formal ; colloquially ) is a seaside town and community in the county of Gwynedd, north-west Wales; it lies on the estuary of the Afon Mawddach and Cardigan Bay. Located in the historic county of Merionethshire, the Welsh form of t ...

. The village was the birthplace of Welsh language author and educationalist Owen Morgan Edwards. Caer Gai, a Roman fort near Llanuwchllyn, was traditionally known as the home of Cei, the character in the

Arthurian legend The Matter of Britain (; ; ; ) is the body of medieval literature and legendary material associated with Great Britain and Brittany and the legendary kings and heroes associated with it, particularly King Arthur. The 12th-century writer Geoffr ...

known in English as Sir Kay. Poets of the 15th century recorded a story, ultimately deriving from the Prose ''Merlin'' included in the

Lancelot-Grail The ''Lancelot-Grail Cycle'', also known as the Vulgate Cycle or the Pseudo-Map Cycle, is an early 13th-century French Arthurian legend, Arthurian literary cycle consisting of interconnected prose episodes of chivalric romance originally writte ...

and the

Post-Vulgate Cycle The Post-Vulgate Cycle, also known as the Post-Vulgate Arthuriad, the Post-Vulgate ''Roman du Graal'' (''Romance of the Grail'') or the Pseudo-Robert de Boron Cycle, is one of the major Old French -4; we might wonder whether there's a point at wh ...

, that

King Arthur According to legends, King Arthur (; ; ; ) was a king of Great Britain, Britain. He is a folk hero and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain. In Wales, Welsh sources, Arthur is portrayed as a le ...

and Cei were brought up at Caer Gai as foster brothers.Bromwich, p. 311. Caer Gai is also Grade II* listed.

Demographics

Welsh language

According to the 2011 Census, Llanuwchllyn is the community with the 2nd highest percentage of Welsh speakers in Wales. 83.5% of residents aged three and over reported being able to speak Welsh in the 2011 Census, as compared to 84.7% reporting being able to do so in the 2001 Census. The figure rose slightly to 83.9% by the 2021 Census.

Ethnicity

As of the 2021 Census, the Llanuwchllyn electoral ward was the least ethnically diverse ward in England and Wales. 99.2% of residents were White British, 0.2% were White Irish, 0.3% were White Other, and 0.3% were mixed race.

Governance

electoral ward A ward is a local authority area, typically used for electoral purposes. In some countries, wards are usually named after neighbourhoods, thoroughfares, parishes, landmarks, geographical features and in some cases historical figures connected t ...

with same name exists. This ward also includes the community of Llangywer with a total population taken at the 2011 census of 877.

Notable people

* John Richards (1765–1850), schoolmaster, became an American politician in New York. * Michael D. Jones (1822–1898) a Welsh Congregationalist minister, principal of a theological college and co-founder of the Welsh settlement of

Y Wladfa Y Wladfa (, 'The Colony'), also occasionally Y Wladychfa Gymreig (, 'The Welsh Settlement'), refers to the establishment of settlements by Welsh colonists and immigrants in the Argentine Patagonia, beginning in 1865, mainly along the coast of ...

in Patagonia. * Sir Owen Morgan Edwards (1858–1920) historian, educationalist and writer. * John Meirion Morris (1936–2020), sculptor.

Notes

References

* {{authority control Villages in Gwynedd Locations associated with Arthurian legend