Hello and croeso, welcome to this week’s episode of Welsh Murders and Mysteries! I’m Mags, Kay’s co-host and the non-Welsh one. I’m usually the spooky, strange and all-around mystery side of this podcast, but this week, we are going to be talking about something that is less of a mystery, and more of a spark fuelling the resurgence of the Welsh national identity that had ripple effects across the politics of the country. We are going to be looking into the flooding of Capel Celyn. Sources will be available in the show notes!
Y Llyn Celyn llawn celwydd – Llyn Celyd full of lies
Let’s sit back and imagine this for a minute: you and your family have lived in your house for generations, as long as your grandmother’s grandfather’s grandmother can remember. It’s in an idyllic valley in Wales, the Welsh hills surround you, and the view from your village is all you have ever known.
And now a corporation from outside of your village, outside of your country, comes in and decides that your village is the perfect spot to fill up with water and use as a reservoir to funnel water to their city. That isn’t even in the same country. And they are going to be in charge of the water, they aren’t even going to pay your local council for it. It is going to belong to them. And you and your family, all the families in the village, are going to have to move away to somewhere else. How would you feel?
This story made me quite furious, and I can only imagine how it made the residents of Capel Celyn feel.
What I described above is a very simplified version of what happened to the residents of Capel Celyn, but we are going to go a bit deeper into the story.
Now, I am a huge fan of listening to people who actually lived through experiences, so I am going to recommend a different podcast here – no sponsorship, I used it for research into this subject, and cannot recommend it enough, it’s called Drowned – The Flooding of a Village and is available on BBC Sounds, the link is in the show notes if you do want to have a listen and get a first hand account of what happened, and the effect it had on the community, as the host speaks with a lot of the residents of Capel Celyn.
Capel Celyn was a picturesque village in north Wales. Old photos show it as a village of stone buildings; homes and cottages, and a few shops. If you drove through Wales today, you would find villages that strongly resemble Capel Celyn in the 50s. In the summer of 1955, the villagers learned their homes were going to be the site of a reservoir to provide drinking water for Liverpool, 50 miles away from Capel Celyn. Now, the residents of Capel Celyn did not lay down and let the Liverpool Corporation steam roll over them, they went to Liverpool to protest, they did everything in their power to fight against the flooding of their village.
And Llyn Celyn wasn’t even the first time that Welsh land had been flooded to accommodate the English – in 1904, the Elan Valley was flooded to provide water for Birmingham, and in 1880 Llanwddyn was flooded to make Lake Vyrnwy was flooded to provide water for Liverpool.
In the case of Capel Celyn, it was a private bill, brought by the Liverpool City Council (AKA the Liverpool Corporation) to Parliament in 1960 that sealed Capel Celyn’s fate, following protests and acts of defiance – which we will look in to in a little bit. Villagers from Capel Celyn traveled to Liverpool to bring their protests directly to the city that was taking away their homes, but it was seen by some as futile, because they believed the decision to flood the village had been made long before the public even found out about the proposal. The villagers, and others across Wales who took up their cause, felt that the flooding of Cwm Tryweryn was a threat to Welsh culture and identity; Capel Celyn was a predominantly Welsh-speaking village. To highlight the importance of it being a Welsh-speaking village – the Welsh language TV channel S4C was only secured in 1982. In the 50s and 60s there was a feeling that the Welsh rural way of life and the Welsh language were declining (which they were), The villagers fought to save their homes, but 12 farms, the school, the chapel and the village post office were flooded. The protests were not limited to passive activities, though.
3 Welsh men were sent to prison for planting a bomb at a transformer being used in the building of the dam. The bomb went off on a February day in 1963, two years before the dam was eventually completed and opened. The men were members of the Mudiad Amddiffyn Cymru (The Movement to Defend Wales), and their membership harkened back to Welsh nationalist hero Owain Glyndwr, as like Glyndwr, they had also served in the British Army. Their names were Emyr Llywelyn Jones, Owain Williams and John Albert Jones. Emyr and Owain were given 12 month custodial sentences and John Albert Jones was given a 3 year probation period. Again, you can hear more of their story in the fantastic podcast I mentioned at the beginning, Drowned: The Flooding of a Village. I’m going to highly recommend it again, this time with added emphasis on being able to listen to native Welsh speakers speaking in their beautiful language and not ruining it, like I do.
Because the Bill had passed in Parliament on 31st July 1957, with 175 MPs voting in favour and 79 opposing, the construction of the dam and reservoir went ahead. The Liverpool Corporation committed to a financial contribution of £62,900 (around 22 million in 2022’s money) to Merioneth Council, and had to find new homes for the villagers it was displacing. There was added controversy (and adding a mild trigger warning) with the removal and reburial of those interred in the cemetery, as some witnesses stated that they did not think that people were actually given the remains of their relatives, because they had seen a rag and bone lorry pull up, and all the remains just piled in to it. Which is horrifying to think about.
And the protests didn’t end just because the dam had been built; at the opening ‘celebration’ on the 21stOctober 1965, the mics were cut during the speeches, the crowd sang Hen Wlad fy Nhadau – the Welsh national anthem – and people were shouting Twll di pob Sais (which means all English are arseholes), and ‘drown your own valleys’. The Union Jack flag that had been fluttering was torn down, stamped on, and the crowd tried to set it on fire, not to mention the stones being thrown at the speakers as they tried to deliver their speeches.
In 2005, the Liverpool City Council issued a formal apology to the people of Capel Celyn, that avoided actually apologising for the flooding itself, and while some welcomed the gesture, others said it was a useless political move that had come 40 years too late.
Capel Celyn has inspired a lot of art and sentiment across Wales.
There is a monument that was painted on a ruined cottage wall on the outskirts of Llanrhystud, just south of Aberystwyth, over 50 years ago by Meic Stephens. It’s a simple monument, a red background with the words ‘Cofiwch Dryweryn’ which means ‘Remember Treweryn’ painted on it in white. This monument holds a special place in Cymru, painted only in Cymraeg, because Capel Celyn was a Welsh-speaking community. It has been the subject of some defacement over the years, recently being defaced in 2008, 2010, 2013, 2014, and more recently in 2019, when it was smeared in black paint with ‘Elvis’ written in white over the top. The response to this, beyond people coming together to restore it – it was actually partially knocked down after it had been restored in a further act of vandalism, and volunteers came to rebuild it- around 50 new monuments appeared on walls across Wales, all painted simply in red, with the same white lettering reminding all those who see it to ‘Cofiwch Dryweryn’.
Llyn Celyn has recently been in the news, as a child on a trip found a mesolithic flint blade because of 2023’s dry summer and autumn seasons in the region, showing the rich history of the valley.
While the story of Capel Celyn may seem simple, it was a spark that ignited Welsh Nationalist Spirit across the country, echoes of which can still be heard across the country today.
The flooding of numerous Welsh valleys since Victorian times inspired a beautiful poem written in the 1960s by R.S. Thomas. ‘Reservoirs’
There are places in Wales I don’t go:
Reservoirs that are the subconscious
Of a people, troubled far down
With gravestones, chapels, villages even;
The serenity of their expression
Revolts me, it is a pose
For strangers, a watercolour’s appeal
To the mass, instead of the poem’s
Harsher conditions. There are the hills,
Too; gardens gone under the scum
Of the forests; and the smashed faces
Of the farms with the stone trickle
Of their tears down the hills’ side.
Where can I go, then, from the smell
Of decay, from the putrefying of a dead
Nation? I have walked the shore
For an hour and seen the English
Scavenging among the remains
Of our culture, covering the sand
Like the tide and, with the roughness
Of the tide, elbowing our language
Into the grave that we have dug for it.
This poem also inspired ‘Ready for Drowning’ by the Manic Street Preachers.
Cwm Tryweryn Cyfododd y Golïath pres yn Lerpwl I waradwyddo ac ysbeilio’r werin; Gan gasglu’r afonydd at ei gilydd i gyd I foddi’r gymdeithas yn Nhryweryn: Tyred, Ddafydd, â’th gerrig o’r afon, A Duw y tu ôl i’th ffon-dafl, I gadw emynau Capel Celyn, A baledi Bob Tai’r Felin Rhag eu mwrdro gan y dŵr yn argae’r diafl.
Gofyn, Ddewi, i Dduw yn dy weddïau Am achub rhag y Philistiad dy werin; Arweiniwch, y ddau Lywelyn a Glyndŵr, Eich byddinoedd i Gwm Tryweryn: A thi, y Michael mawr o Fodiwan, Pe byddet yn y Bala yn awr, Ni châi mynwent wag Capel Celyn, Cartref a chnwd a chân a thelyn Eu claddu tan argae’r dienwaededig gawr.
The moneyed Goliath rose up in Liverpool To shame and despoil the country people, Gathering rivers together to drown The community at Tryweryn: Come, David, with your river stones, And God behind your sling, To save the hymns of Capel Celyn, And the ballads of Bob Tai'r Felin From being murdered by the water in the devil's dam.
Dewi, ask God in your prayers To save your people from the Philistines; The two Llywelyns and Glyndwr lead Your armies to Cwm Tryweryn: And you, great Michael of Bodiwan, If you were in Bala now, The empty graveyard of Capel Celyn, Homes and crops and songs and harps would not Be buried under the uncircumcised giant's dam. D. Gwenallt Jones
I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of Welsh Murders and Mysteries and learning about Capel Celyn with me, and that you’ll join Kay and myself on another episode! Special thanks to my Welsh Whisperer who is helping me out with my pronunciation. Hwyl Fawr, and see you next time!
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