Dolbadarn Castle
A round tower standing above Llyn Padarn, free to walk into, at the end of a short farm track.
03Story
A saint, a castle, a quarry, a mountain
Llanberis carries four identities at once: a saint’s name that doesn’t match its church, a medieval castle, a Victorian quarrying industry, and the modern business of getting people up a mountain.
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Llan-Peris, not Llan-Padarn
The village takes its name from Saint Peris — “llan” plus a soft-mutated form of his name — even though the Victorian parish church built here is dedicated to St Padarn instead. Llyn Peris, the smaller lake south-east of the village, keeps the original saint’s name too.
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A castle for a mountain pass
Llywelyn ap Iorwerth built the round tower at Dolbadarn in the late 12th or early 13th century, commanding the pass between the two lakes: one of the finest surviving towers of its kind in Wales.
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The quarry that built the village
For over a century, Dinorwig quarry — on the mountainside above the lake — was the reason Llanberis existed. St Padarn’s Church itself was funded by the Assheton Smith family, who owned the rights to the slate being cut out of it.
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Two railways, one industry apart
The Victorian slate trade left Llanberis two working railways: the mountain line to the summit, and the narrow-gauge line along the lake, built to move stone and now carrying visitors instead.
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Power from the same mountain
Under the slopes above the village, Dinorwig Power Station — built between 1974 and 1984 — can reach 1,800 megawatts from a standing start in about sixteen seconds: a second, hidden industry built into the same ground the quarry once cut into.
Llyn Peris keeps the saint’s name the village itself later dropped.
Atlas of Wales
