Dafarn Dywyrch, Llandegla

Dafarn Dywyrch

The farmhouse here, now part of a cider-making farm, was once a pub by the east-west drovers’ road. Victorian writer George Borrow recorded in Wild Wales that the pub was called Tafarn Tywyrch. He was told that it was originally a “turf hovel” – made of slabs of turf. Tywyrch is Welsh for turfs.

Records show that the pub was known as Cross Foxes in 1795. However, Tafarn Tywyrch may have been an earlier name which was revived by 1854 when Borrow, an Englishman, travelled around Wales.

He noted that Tafarn Tywyrch had “rather an antiquated appearance” with a “sanded kitchen”. The elderly woman who worked there claimed not to understand Borrow’s request in Welsh for breakfast. Later she explained that she thought “no Englishman could speak Welsh, that his tongue was too short”. She prided herself on speaking Vale of Clwyd Welsh which was “the best Welsh in the world, the Welsh of the Bible”. This could be a reference to the connections between the Bible’s translators and St Asaph, in the Vale of Clwyd.

Borrow claimed that he caught her out by asking her the Welsh for “salmon”, which she didn’t know but he did.

During a storm in 1879, a lightning bolt passed through the roof of the stable at Dafarn Dywyrch. It hit a horse and injured a boy inside, then demolished a wall as it left the building.

Since 2005 Rosie’s Cider has been produced at this farm by Steve and Nicola Hughes. They named the product after their Jack Russell dog. Although the farm is more than 300 metres above sea level, it produces apples from hundreds of trees. There are over 60 varieties, enabling several different types of cider to be produced on the premises. One of the farm’s outbuildings is now a cider sales outlet, where visitors can sample the drinks.

Postcode: LL11 3BA    View Location Map

Website of Rosie’s Cider