Coed Doctor, Llanberis

Link to Welsh translationCoed Doctor, Llanberis

This woodland’s name reflects the site’s history as the place where generations of people received treatment from doctors at Bryngwyddfan Hall. The building is now Alpine Lodge. The woodland was immediately adjacent, before the Coed-y-Glyn housing was built. Coed is Welsh for ‘woodland’.

Dr Lloyd Williams of Bryngwyddfan and his assistant Dr John Roberts were often called to aid men injured in local slate quarries. In 1897 they, and Dr Mills Roberts of the quarry hospital, rushed to the aid of Owen Ellis Williams, aged about 15. Owen, an orphan, was badly injured when he tripped on the steam locomotive where he was the fireman (stoker). Despite the medics’ efforts, he died within a few hours.

One of the Bryngwyddfan staff, Miss Jones, was so popular that well-wishers gave her a walnut writing desk when she left Llanberis, after 12 years, in 1908 to work as a nurse at Liverpool’s Royal Infirmary.

Dr Williams’ only son, Kelyth Pierce Lloyd Williams, was killed in the First World War, aged 21. Kelyth broke off from his medical studies to serve as a Second Lieutenant with the Welsh Regiment. He died in October 1916 and is buried at Grenay, near Lille, France.

Bryngwyddfan was home to Dr Douglas Jones after the war. One night in April 1933, he was called out to the slopes of Snowdon to help a woman from Harrow, London, who had fallen and broken her leg in a fall while descending at dusk. By the time the doctor and his guides reached the remote location, another rescue party had already taken the walker to Bangor Infirmary!

Dr Jones was succeeded at Bryngwyddfan by Dr Vernwy Jones, the last doctor there and the first doctor at the new surgery opposite the old Medical Hall (now Joe Brown’s).

With thanks to Gareth Roberts, of Menter Fachwen, Ken Jones and Gwyndaf Hughes

Postcode: LL55 4PX    View Location Map

Footnotes: Recollection of Bryngwyddfan doctors

Gwyndaf Hughes recalls: “Dr Douglas Jones was a large man. I was afraid of him as a child. When I was five or six, something happened to his car outside our house. He put bricks under the rear of it, to keep the wheels clear of the road. Then he put a brick on the accelerator until the car roared and swayed frighteningly. I didn’t see any more because mam rushed me into the house.

“Dr Vernwy was a neat man but didn’t speak Welsh – a problem in Llanberis at that time. He was the doctor who opened the new surgery.”