secret cave in Rhiwledyn

A hidden cave in the cliffs above Llandudno once held Wales’s first Welsh-language printing press. Set in the limestone headland of Rhiwledyn, known locally as the Little Orme, the spot is reached by a steep path that drops nearly a hundred metres from the cliff top to a narrow ledge above the sea. The cave’s entrance faces north, barely two feet high, and opens into a low chamber where the printers worked in secret. The press was brought here in 1587 to print Y Drych Cristianogawl, a pocket-sized Catholic guide in Welsh. Three printers, led by Roger Thackwell, carried the heavy wooden press, ink, paper and type up the cliffs by boat under cover of darkness. After months of work they finished the first part of the book, but soldiers soon surrounded the cave. Though more than forty men under Sir Thomas Mostyn laid siege, the printers escaped overnight, leaving only Thackwell behind. Visitors today descend to the ledge and peer into the small opening. A tunnel about seven feet long leads to a chamber roughly ten by twelve feet, with a shaft rising another fifteen feet that may have served as a flue or escape route. Archaeologists have found marks in the floor that could be from the press’s wooden frame, though later debris covers much of the evidence. From the cliff top the view stretches across wind farms to the sea, a reminder that this quiet ledge once echoed with the clatter of clandestine printing.