Y Coleg ar y Fenai (The College on the Menai)
Bangor is well known across the UK thanks to its university based in the prominent building standing proud on top of the hill, but ‘Y Coleg Ar Y Bryn’ hasn’t always been so…
The posted coordinates of this two-stage multicache take you to a monument on the edge of the A5, just as it swings around into the city.
A slate plaque at GZ reads:
- YMA Y SAFAI GWESTY’R “PENRHYN ARMS” -
CATREF CYNTAF COLEG PRIFYSGOL GOGLEDD CYMRU
"Here Stood The 'Penrhyn Arms' Hotel"
"First Home of The University College of North Wales"
Before the current university building opened in 1911, the university was sited in an old coaching inn on the shores of the Menai – The Penrhyn Arms. It was funded by donations from local miners and farmers to give the people of North Wales the chance to have access to higher education.
The monument at GZ is the entranceway to the original inn / university building. As you make your way to the cache you will walk over the foundations of the building and into the university garden, which remain recognisable today.
At the time the building stood, the A5 passed under the bridge on what is now called Ffordd Pen Y Bryn and down Bangor High Street. I can only imagine the building was demolished to make way for the wider road when the university stopped using the Penrhyn Arms in 1926.
To find the cache, take all four dates on the slate plaque (in chronological order) to represent:
ABCD EFGH IJKL MNOP
The cache is at: N53 A(H-E).FPO W004 (J-K)P.BBD