Bryn Adda in Penrhosgarnedd

[Admin (Matt)]

Does anyone have any old photos or pictures of a house called Bryn Adda in Penrhosgarnedd?  Or even know anyone who used to live there?


Katie Lench posted 12/17/2008

[Admin (Matt)]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bryn_Roberts

Could it be John Bryn Roberts farmhouse? if so it was an 'old tenant farm' so it might be worth checking records for the Vaynol estate.



there are a few letters in the Gwynedd Archives:

XQA/L/7/12 LETTER: J. Roberts, Bryn Adda, Bangor, to H. Barber, Clerk of the Peace, Bangor, re opposition of Mr. Griffith Jones, a ratepayer of Llanberis, and several others, to the granting of a new licence to ...  more 1883 Sept. 9

XM/4889/411 LETTER: J. Bryn Roberts, Bryn Adda, Bangor, to Rev. J. Hughes informing him that he would check in London whether the parish incurred any risk of costs by giving notice of objection.  

[Admin (Matt)]

The extraction of Personal Names from some of the farms and smallholdings on the large 'Vaynol' (Faenol) estate in Caernarvonshire as they appeared to an agent or surveyor around 1800.
Vaynol MS. 4057 - Caernarvonshire Record Office.

Bangor Parish  
Bryn Adda  
Owen JONES  
Son in law of Richard JONES part called Ty’n y Lon

Bangor Parish  
Bryn Adda  
Richard JONES  
Lessee and occupier

Bangor Parish  
Bryn Adda  
William JONES  
Pew in Bangor Church belonged to the farm – neglected –
William JONES repaired and keeps for his own family

[Admin (Matt)]

Is this it?

http://www.propertyfinder.com/cgi-bin/rsearch?a=o&id=505219184&da=TROVIT

[Huw Chambers]

I used to live in the house on Ffordd Penrhos (179) which was demolished to make way for a larger entrance when they built the estate. I lived there in the 60s , so I'm sure I've got some photos which include Bryn Adda as a background. By then, it was some sort of agricultural laboratory . The gates were locked at night, so a couple of times, a sheep was left by a farmer in our garage for somebody to collect the following morning. Strangely enough, I cannot ever remember going into the complex often - there was a short cut through it from the end of Pen y Ffridd . My mother used to tell me that the sheep in there would make me ill !
    I always assumed it was named Bryn Adda because that the river Adda sprung up in the area, but apparently its because the original owner came from a farm of the same name somewhere in Llanddeiniolen.

[David Price]

It was Judge John Bryn Roberts who lived at Bryn Adda on Penrhos Road. He was born in 1843 at Bryn Adda farmhouse, near Aberpwll, on the western edge of Faenol Park  (it was in the parish of Bangor until 1888).  The family were still there in 1871, but by the time of the 1881 Census, they had moved to a house, (possibly newly-built) on Penrhos Road that they named Bryn Adda. In a well-researched biograpy, Jack Eaton, Judge Bryn Roberts, Cardiff, (1989), there is strangely no mention of the move to Penrhos.  Accordingto his entry in the Dictionary of Welsh Biography, he took up motoring when in his eighties and treated his car like a hunting horse (he had often hunted with the hounds).  But of course, Penrhos Road was much quieter in those days! He was a County Court Judge, and much involved in political and religious controversies - he was an ardent Liberal and Calvinistic Methodist, but rather right-wing in his views.  He died in 1931.

 
I don't know when the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food took over Bryn Adda for their research laboratories, but they seemed well established when we moved to live at 169 Penrhos Road in the mid 1950s.  I have only vague memories of the house - an undistinguished  Victorian villa? possibly yellow brick?  I remember the little lodge, just inside the gates, and when they cut down the surrounding trees, (early '60s?) the newly-cut timber provided a wonderful adventure playround for local children!

I don't know of any photos of the house, but it might be worth looking at John Bryn Roberts's papers at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth - they contain some family photos.

David Price

[Cofiwch fi at eich rhieni Huw]