The Oakeley Arms Hotel is a Grade II listed hotel near

Maentwrog Maentwrog () is a village and community in the Welsh county of Merionethshire (now part of Gwynedd), lying in the Vale of Ffestiniog just below Blaenau Ffestiniog, within the Snowdonia National Park. The River Dwyryd runs alongside the vil ...

North Wales North Wales ( ) is a Regions of Wales, region of Wales, encompassing its northernmost areas. It borders mid Wales to the south, England to the east, and the Irish Sea to the north and west. The area is highly mountainous and rural, with Snowdon ...

. The original building dates back to the 17th century, and was once part of the nearby Tan-y-Bwlch Estate. Although its principal use has been as an inn, historically it has also been used as a

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...

, makeshift court house,

polling station A polling place is where voters cast their ballots in elections. The phrase polling station is also used in American English, British English and Canadian English although a polling place is the building and polling station is the specific ...

and

police station A police station is a facility operated by police or a similar law enforcement agency that serves to accommodate police officers and other law enforcement personnel. The role served by a police station varies by agency, type, and jurisdiction, ...

History

The Oakeley Arms Hotel was originally known as the Tan y Bwlch Inn, because it belonged to the nearby Tan y Bwlch Estate. Some local records claim that the hotel was built on the original site of the estate’s manor house (now located ¼ mile west and called Plas Tan-y-Bwlch). The inn was first built in the 1600s but was extended during the 1700s when it was owned by a local drover. In his 1778 book ''A Tour in Wales'', it was described by writer and traveller

Thomas Pennant Thomas Pennant (16 December 1798) was a Welsh natural history, naturalist, traveller, writer and antiquarian. He was born and lived his whole life at his family estate, Downing Hall, near Whitford, Flintshire, in Wales. As a naturalist he had ...

as “a very neat small inn, for the reception of travellers who ought to think themselves much indebted to a nobleman, for the great improvement it received from his munificence ”. Sometime during the early 1840s the inn was renamed as the Oakeley Arms, in honour of the family who owned the Tan-y-Bwlch estate. The Oakeley family were one of the richest families in the area, their wealth having come from the slate mines of nearby

Blaenau Ffestiniog Blaenau Ffestiniog () is a town in Gwynedd, Wales. Once a slate mining centre in historic Merionethshire, it now relies much on tourists, drawn for instance to the Ffestiniog Railway and Llechwedd Slate Caverns. It reached a population of 12,0 ...

. In 1910 the Oakeley Arms Hotel was auctioned off from the estate and was bought privately. It was given a

Grade II In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Hi ...

listing in 1954 because of its historical importance “as a fine example of an estate-built inn (one of several associated with the major estates of north Wales) and strong architectural character consistent with this patronage, not least in the quality of the masonry”. In the nineteenth century, the Oakeley Arms was given its own crest. It means “I am cautious but I do not fear”.
In 1940 the hotel was host to the

Cottesmore School Cottesmore is a boarding preparatory school in the United Kingdom, founded in 1894. History Cottesmore was founded by Geoffrey Davison Brown in 1894 in Hove, East Sussex. He named the school after Cottesmore, Rutland, where he was born. The n ...

from Hove Sussex, evacuated from the south coast of England. The school later moved to a former workhouse in Cors-y-Gedol Hall, near Barmouth, until the end of the war.
Today, the hotel is privately owned and has recently undergone a programme of renovation.

References

{{coord, 52.9491, -3.9953, format=dms, type:landmark, display=title Pubs in Gwynedd Grade II listed pubs in Wales Grade II listed buildings in Gwynedd Hotels in Gwynedd