‘Our Community Changed For The Worse Because Of False Promises’, North Wales Farmer Says

A farmer from North Wales has spoken of how his community has changed to a village full of second homes and of his fears for the future.

Cyril Lewis, once farmed as many as nine smallholdings, all of which were once owned by the Forestry Commission, but have now been sold. He remembers how Cwm Penmachno was a thriving community of farmers and slate quarrymen in the upper reaches of the Conwy valley. 

Many years ago, the village was bustling as local people set up private shops in the village to supply the 100 quarrymen that worked in the quarry nearby, and the woollen mill. It was a community of self-sufficient farmers who would barter food and labour, and also had a top quality school.

Remembering his school days he said: 

“There were about 40 children in school in Cwm. 11 of us were trying the eleven plus and 10 passed to go to the grammar school. That was unheard of. There was a co-operative too. An old fashioned cooperative formed and owned by the community and there were five privately owned shops  as well as farmers supplying people directly with things like a milk round.”

Now, Cwm Penmachno is very different and Cyril recalls the beginning of the decline.

“It was when the quarry closed in 1962. We knew that the costs were getting more and more expensive and that the caverns were going deeper and deeper but it was still a massive shock when it closed. Men lost their work; lost their income. 

“There was no chance of selling the houses because so many were for sale and anyway, who wanted to move here with no jobs. Within a year virtually half the houses in Cwm were empty. People just packed up and moved out –  they were empty for ages and then became holiday homes. Shops closed and it became more isolated… young people don’t want to stay here. It’s a spiral.”

But unbeknown to Cyril another threat to the community’s way of life was growing – literally – in the valley.

“When the forestry started here they gave us hope, insisting that forestry was more labour intensive than agriculture. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. After you’ve planted the trees, in the UK it takes about forty to fifty years for them to grow large enough to be harvested. So there’s no work for that period of time.

“These days if they need any big jobs doing, they bring contractors in. I remember 60 people working in the Forestry in Penmachno. There isn’t one here now. There’s only two forestry workers doing maintenance in the whole of the Conwy valley.”

He feels the future is gloomy in the valley for farming unless major policy changes are adopted for the future: “I wouldn’t like to be a young farmer today, looking at the future of farming more as a conservation farmer than really farming to produce food and animals.

“One of the big problems is there’s a disconnect between people in the towns and agriculture. When we see food shortages, they don’t link it to how farming has been forced to change. Tourism is the same. People come to Wales because of the beauty of the place. That beauty hasn’t simply emerged in five, ten, fifty years. It’s because of hundreds of years of how it’s been managed.

“My biggest worry is if more trees are planted in the valley it will be yet another knock like we had in 1962. We must avoid that at all costs for the sake of the community. If any tree planting is proposed for the valley in the future the local people must be consulted before doing so.”