C O N T E X T 1 2 1 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 1 25 IHBC Annual School Annual School 2011 School 2011 IHBC An 2011 IHBC Annual S IHBC Annual School School 2011 IHBC IHBC Annual Scho Trust’s Aberconwy House; Plas Mawr, a remarkable Elizabethan townhouse in Cadw’s guardianship; and 19th century bridges by Thomas Telford and George Stevenson. Conwy’s importance, combined with its state of preservation, led to its inclusion in the Castles and Town Walls of King Edward in Gwynedd World Heritage Site, designated in 1986. Our guide Dave Jump coped manfully with a host of distractions, including a dog that thought the IHBC group was its personal troop of stick-throwers. He explained, from his own close involvement, how the town had benefited from a wide range of investment, recovering marginal areas, removing buildings to reveal the exterior of the town walls and improving the public realm. We were told that the castle had not always been so well cared for: in the post-medieval period its setting had been, variously, a mill-pond, a railway yard, a scrap yard and coal depot, and, latterly a Cadw maintenance yard. A key moment for Conwy was the opposition to a new road bridge that ultimately led to the construction of a road tunnel under the river, funded by the Welsh Development Agency and opened in 1991. It by-passed the town, allowing pedestrians more space, although we did witness some traffic problems. In terms of the general townscape, we saw improvements to railings and paving, in places such as Lancaster Square, and we admired a great deal of what had been done. However, we noted some buildings in poor condition and a chapel for sale. On the castle tour Roy Williams, Cadw’s head custodian for the castle and Plas Mawr, and Cadw’s Right: David Grech on the Conwy tour sketching Aberconwy House and (below) the result senior inspector, Kate Roberts, explained their plans to improve visitor facilities. The castle has some 170,000 visitors a year: they aim to increase this to 250,000 over the next five years. At Plas Mawr we were told that the Welsh were not allowed to own land within Conwy until the 16th century. It is perhaps fitting that the house’s unrivalled plasterwork includes the heraldic emblem of a severed Englishman’s head. Some of us sensed a certain amount of enjoyment in pointing this out. The house, built in 1576 by Robert Wynn (third son of the Left:Telford’s suspension and Stephenson’s tubular bridges (Photo: RobertWalker)
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