Site overview
Hen Dwr is a former windmill on the ridge above Llandudno, near the end of Nant-y-Gamar Road and south of Bodafon Hall. A windmill was built on the hill between 1617 and 1642, and a mill on the site of the present building is shown on a 1748 map by Lewis Morris. The site also appears as a windmill in an illustration in Pennant's Tour of Gloddaeth Hall.
By 1840 the building had become a dwelling known as the Old Windmill. The surviving structure is a two-storey tapering mill tower, pebbledashed and roofed with a pointed conical slate roof. The conical slate roof dates from about 1930, and the building was renovated and extended from the late 1970s.
Hen Dwr was listed at Grade II in 1951.
Map
History
Hen Dwr stands on a ridge above Llandudno, at the end of Nant-y-Gamar Road and about 500 metres south of Bodafon Hall. It is a former tower windmill, later adapted to domestic use, and retains the distinctive form of its mill tower.
The site has an early windmill history. A windmill was built on the hill between 1617 and 1642, and a mill on the site of the present building is apparently shown on a 1748 map by Lewis Morris. A windmill is also clearly shown at this site in the illustration in Pennant's Tour of Gloddaeth Hall. By 1840 the building was in domestic use as the Old Windmill, and the small two-storey extension probably belongs to that phase of conversion. Coflein records that by 1842 the Old Mill was a dwelling.
The former windmill tower survives as a two-storey tapering structure, pebbledashed externally and covered by a pointed conical slate roof with a brick chimney. The roof dates from about 1930. The tower has windows at two levels with modern glazing. A small two-storey extension in matching materials adjoins it, also with a brick chimney, while a larger late twentieth-century extension is attached but excluded from the listed description. The old tower retains two exposed beams on the ground floor and a single stop-chamfered beam on the upper floor.
The building was extensively renovated and modernised from the late twentieth century. It was designated as a Grade II listed building on 10 January 1951, notwithstanding later additions, as a picturesque structure with probably eighteenth-century origins.
Timeline
Mill shown on map
Converted to dwelling
Conical slate roof added
Listed building designation
Late twentieth-century renovation
Sources and records
Coflein / RCAHMW site record
Windmill World site entry
British Listed Buildings entry
Property listing