Qualla: Beddgelert

Beddgelert: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

David Pritchard ran the Goat Hotel in Beddgelert in the late 1700s and he had a problem common to publicans everywhere: he needed more visitors. The village had no railway. It had no famous battle. It had a name, Bedd Gelert, that meant Grave of Gelert in Welsh, and Pritchard knew the kind of story English Romantic tourists wanted to be told. So he invented one. He built a raised mound in a meadow beside the river, set up two stones at either end, and put it about that this was the grave of Llywelyn the Great's faithful hound, slain by mistake when the prince thought the dog had killed his infant son. The tale was completely fabricated; the village was actually named after Saint Gelert, an obscure Celtic Christian missionary who settled here in the 8th century. Pritchard's lie outlasted him by two and a half centuries. The fake grave is still there. The tourists still come.

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Beddgelert: The Real Gelert

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Saint Gelert was a real person, an early leader in Celtic Christianity who settled in this valley at the confluence of the Glaslyn and Afon Colwyn in the early 8th century. The earliest written record of the village's name comes from 1258, when a document spells it 'Bekelert', an...

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Beddgelert: Stone Bridge, Dark Stone Houses

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Beddgelert sits in a deep valley where two rivers meet, surrounded by Snowdonia's highest mountains: Moel Hebog rises sharply to the west, and the Snowdon horseshoe sweeps to the north. The A4085 between Caernarfon and Porthmadog threads through the village. Most of the houses an...

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Beddgelert: Marged the Wrestler, Bestall the Bear

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Marged ferch Ifan was born here in 1696, lived ninety-seven years, and earned a place in Welsh oral tradition as a woman of extraordinary physical strength. She kept a harp and played it well, but she was also remembered for outwrestling men, hunting with her own hounds, and maki...

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Beddgelert: A Meteorite Through the Roof

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Beddgelert has been used as a film location more than its size would suggest. The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, starring Ingrid Bergman, was shot here in 1958 with the surrounding mountains standing in for China. Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life used the scenery in 2003. In 1968 the...

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