OWEN GLYNDWR'S PRISON-HOUSE.
(To THE EDITOR OP TEE "SPECTATOR"]
SIR,—The care which you have always shown for the pre- servation of places of historic interest tempts me to write to you about a glaring act of vandalism which, I fear, is about to be perpetrated in North Wales. The prison-house (known locally for five centuries as " Carchardy Owen ") in which Owen Glyndwr immured his prisoners is about to come to a prosaic and ignoble end. Together with the adjoining cottages, it is to be pulled down and replaced by workmen's cottages of a useful modern design. This building, now a " mouldeed ruin," is situated in the heart and the most beautiful region of that valley of the Dee (Glyn Dyfrdwy), from which the Welsh hero, who was "not in the roll of common men," derived his name. Passing through the picturesque village of Carrog a few days ago, amid "snowy summits old in story," and seeing the crumbled ruin, now threatened with destruction, as it verged on the banks of the full-flowing river (inevitably recalling Tennyson's "As the south-west that blowing Bala lake Fills all the sacred Dee"), I was tempted to write to the Manchester Guardian (Welsh edition) appealing to generous Welshmen to come forward to avert the calamity of seeing this irreplaceable national possession destroyed. Mr. Ernest Rhys, in his weekly "Literary Notes" which he writes to the Welsh edition of that journal, has suggested a shilling subscription, and appeals to me to become "land agent." But this proposal is wholly inadequate. Unless a sum of about £200 is promptly secured—this being, I understand, about the value of the property (including the adjoining cottages), which has recently changed hands—an act which will be irreparable, and which should make Welshmen blush with shame, is likely to
be committed.—I am, Sir, &c., L. J. ROBERTS. Tegvan, Rhyl.
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