At the end of August, I started looking at what I'd always thought was a bit of a strange assertion about Treforys, a north Wales slate quarry-related planned village near Porthmadog.
The assertion? That made in Welsh Slate: Archaeology and History of an Industry (RCAHMW, 2015, reprinted with "minor corrections" 2016), of Treforys being "a sort of Johannesburg - a synonym for a wild and lawless place". An almost identical version later appeared in at least one UNESCO slate landscapes bid report.
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| Treforys village, centre of a 2026 correction to its history. |
Johannesburg? That wasn't founded and named, in a well documented narrative, until 1886. Treforys had been abandoned before the Census of 1871 and it hadn't been completed until 1858. So Johannesburg could never have been a place that Treforys was contemporaneously compared with; it's something that appears much later, in 1896.
The long-and-short of it is that Dr. David Gwyn, a man who has made a career and formed a consultancy on the back of the history of the slate industry, misquoted and misapplied words written in a biography of a local preacher, Y Parchedig Griffith Roberts, who died in January 1896.
If you're really bored, or just interested in slate quarry things, you can read my forensic analysis of the claim made by Gwyn - an analysis that he has accepted is a "correction" and termed as "comprehensive" - here (free and with no sign up or other catches).
Now, I won't claim that seeing someone forensically amass evidence against your long-held assertion (it was first published by Gwyn in 2015) is something likely to make your day better. In that respect, I feel somewhat sorry for Dr. Gwyn. But, he had to defend his Ph.D. thesis all those years ago for a reason: becoming a doctor carries with it responsibilities, principally, that people rely on you in what you say and do and, so, means defending yourself with reliable sources and overall work is then a lifetime, run-of-the-mill thing.
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| Gorsedda slate quarry, for which Treforys was the planned village. |
And that is where I come in: I (very much not a doctor) challenged David Gwyn with a very carefully laid-out evidence base and argument that showed Treforys was never the aim of the anyway quite seriously misquoted 1896 words. As an academic and trusted pair of hands for the likes of the UNESCO north Wales slate landscape bid and so on, I'd be surprised and not a bit concerned if Dr. Gwyn did not expect to be challenged from time to time and that, like most of us, he could sometimes be shown to have made an error.
Let me be clear: I gave David Gwyn three separate opportunities to respond to matters relating to his claim. In the third, he accepted the "correction" that I had issued, that the quotation in fact related to Gorsedda quarry, made no further comment and raised no objections to any of my, then draft, text. The draft has remained materially unchanged through to published form insofar as the critique of David Gwyn is concerned.
Now, I think I can reasonably say I've done everything correctly. I've looked at an assertion of fact. I've chased all the sources (which is not a cheap nor, often, an easy exercise). I've made a fully-fleshed out, fully referenced argument that conclusively proves the 'fact' is wrong; there was clearly demonstrable misquoting and misapplication of the 1896 words.
I've also gone beyond all that, in issuing a draft for consideration to both the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historical Monuments in Wales (RCAHMW), who have hitherto accepted without fuss the many similar texts, long and short, that I've given to them as fee-of-charge research and publications. I recently estimated my voluntary works between 2022 and early 2026 to be valued at some £72,000. This latest, Treforys work I'd estimate at an additional £5000. Hardly to be sniffed at. And there are plenty of others who similarly donate their effort for free; I claim no special status and - though it seems to perplex pretty much everyone - I seek no recognition, beyond usual business-like civility in receiving them (often lacking).
The challenge that the perceptive reader may already have identified here is that Dr. Gwyn was the author of Welsh Slate - a RCAHMW-published book. He has also written extensively on the slate industry within and outside this organisation, often as a consultant. He was a key part of the successful UNESCO slate landscapes bid.
Both RCAHMW and Heneb (in the individual guise of Gwynedd Archaeological Trust) are now faced with my Treforys work, that is not only authoritative but agreed as "a correction" by Gwyn himself. But it also means they will potentially feel uncomfortable about allowing that document to be presented on their respective historical environment databases, 'Coflein' and 'Archwilio'. Their response thus far has been an eerie silence. The same is true of a courtesy copy of my work given to Eryri National Park (and which, in that case, doesn't really need a response).
Will these official recorders of the historic environment of Wales decide to quietly bin my work because it critiques a prominent, but wrong assertion made by a man closely associated with both? Or will they see it for the (David Gwyn-approved) corrective truth that it is?
It's an interesting one. I'm not really holding my breath, other than I hope that these bodies are interested only in accurate records (so far as they can be) for sites in Wales, and not protecting themselves and an author who has, much credit to him, already accepted his error in writing.
Time will tell. I'll post an update when things become clear...
