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Tremadoc

Tremadoc (also spelt Tremadog) is an early nineteenth century planned village, created by William Madocks MP. The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were a time of political and intellectual tumult. Mary Wollstonecraft had recently published A Vindication Of The Rights Of Women. Revolutionary groups were all busy reading Tom Paine's Rights of Man. Revolution had actually taken place in France, with dark and violent consequences. The idealistic young poet Percy Bysshe Shelley lived for a while in Tremadoc around 1813. In the words of his biographer Claire Tomalin, Tremadoc was "a village exactly calculated to appeal to his interest in man's ability to reconstruct the world on a better plan than God's." Tremadoc is then a memorial to an exciting, idealistic, and dangerous time of change.

The village was built on land recovered from marshes beside Traeth Mawr, with work starting in 1800. It was carefully designed, with three main streets meeting at a central square. Architecture is in a Regency style. The centre of Tremadoc is largely unaltered since its completion in 1811.

Madocks lived in a house, called Tan- yr- Alt, just outside the village. This was also the house where Shelley lived during his short residence in Tremadoc. Many years later, in 1889, T.E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, was also born in the village. The house where he was born is now the "Christian Mountain Centre."

Directions: Tremadoc is just off the A498, near Porthmadoc in north Wales. Click here for an interactive map centred on Tremadoc.