GC238R5 A5 Drive-By - Ty Hyll (The Ugly House) (Traditional Cache) in North Wales, United Kingdom created by Chilledbud & Morgs1 adopted by TM

GC238R5 ▼

A cache by Chilledbud & Morgs1 adopted by TM Message this owner

Hidden : 1/23/2010

Difficulty:

Terrain:

Size: Size: small (small)

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Geocache Description:

NO NEED TO REMOVE ANY STONES TO ACCESS THE CACHE.
The cache is in a gap, all you need to do is reach in for it!! TM
CAR_PARK near GZ

This cache is located near -
The Ugly House

The history of the Ugly House (Tŷ Hyll)
is very vague. Putting a guide book together about it was very difficult, but the legend says it was built back in the 15th century by two outlawed brothers, based on the old Welsh law of tŷ unos - a house of a single night. If you could build four walls and have smoke coming out of the chimney between sunset and sunrise, you got the freehold of the land.

Then you had the opportunity to stand on each corner, throw an axe as far as you could and take ownership of all that land too.

This is what's most commonly talked about, though if you look at the size of the house there's no way it could have been built in a day. But there was a strong custom of that being a law, so perhaps something smaller along those lines was built on this site before this structure.

It's thought the building that stands today was built when Thomas Telford was building the A5 from London to Holyhead in the 18th century. The navvies who built the road usually camped alongside it, but we're at the point where the road crosses the Lligwy river so they would have had to stay longer to build the bridge. They worked with stone and so may have had the wherewithal to use some of it to build this house, so they could avoid camping for a while. But there's no conclusive proof as the deeds don't go back that far.
The last known resident, Edward Riley, was here from 1928 until his death in the 1960s. He was caretaker to the outdoor education centre next door and did a lot of what you'd call amateur DIY to the house, which wasn't bad, but didn't really stand the test of time. After he died it passed to his family, but they weren't local and it got used for various things, like an antiques shop, a café and tourist gift shop.

By the 1980s it was empty and falling to rack and ruin, until it was bought by the Snowdonia Society in 1988.

The Snowdonia Society was set up as a charity in 1967 by Esme and Peter Kirby, who ran it from the front room of Dyffryn Mymbyr, their farm, as featured in Thomas Firbank's book, I Bought Mountain. But after beginning to employ staff, the society needed proper accommodation so they bought the Ugly House and lovingly restored it. Peter led the painstaking refurbishment, removing each roof slate, numbering them and replacing them all exactly as they were. Basically, the whole of the inside was overhauled by volunteers.

The outside wasn't changed and it's still known as the Ugly House, and this might be for many reasons. Firstly, perhaps because it was built by the outlaws, who were thought to be 'ugly', dark, sinister characters hiding out in the woods.
Or perhaps it's somehow a mis-spelling of 'Lligwy'.

Or, most likely, 'hyll' doesn't actually mean ugly in old Welsh, but something more like rugged - and that makes more sense, as it is a bit rugged, but not really ugly at all. Ref-Dan James

The A5 is a major road in the United Kingdom. It is also the first Roman built road in England hence the name Roman Road. It runs for about 260 miles (418 km) (including sections concurrent with other designations) from London, England to Holyhead, Wales, following in part a section of the Roman Iter II route which later took the Anglo-Saxon name Watling Street. The history of the A5 begins with Thomas Telford in the early nineteenth century. Following the Act of Union 1800, which unified Great Britain and Ireland, the government saw the need for improving communication links between London and Dublin. A Parliamentary committee led to an Act of Parliament of 1815 that authorised buying out existing turnpike road interests and, where necessary, constructing a new road, to complete the route between the two capitals. This made it the first major civilian state-funded road building project in Britain since Roman times. Through England, the road largely took over existing turnpike roads, which mainly followed the route of the Anglo-Saxon Wæcelinga Stræt (Watling Street), much of which had been historically the Roman road Iter II. From Shrewsbury and through Wales, Telford's work was more extensive. In places he followed existing roads, but he also built new links, including the Menai Suspension Bridge to connect the mainland with Anglesey and the Stanley Embankment to Holy Island. Telford's road was complete with the opening of the Menai Suspension Bridge in 1826.