Former HF Houses - Beddgelert.
Craflwyn Hall in Beddgelert was leased by HF from the National Trust. It is in a beautiful location in Snowdonia (Eryri now).
HF wanted a house in north Wales because they had closed the house at Conwy (I have put a page about that house here).
HF originally opened with rooms in the main house but that was not enough rooms to be economically viable for HF.
So after some work on the stable block these were used as rooms.
I stayed at Craflwyn Hall 3 times. I cant remember the name of the manager the first time I went, it was a couple, she was the manager and he was the chef, The second time I went was during Owen's regime and the 3rd time Richard was the manager. The first two of these holidays I was in one of the single rooms upstairs at the end of the stable block. At the time, I didn't know how lucky I was, they were the best single rooms there.
There were lots of interesting grounds outside Craflwyn Hall and once a deer walked outside past the dining room.
There are some incredible walks from the house. It is possible to walk from the house to the top of Snowdon without crossing any roads. Some of the guests (not me) walked up Snowdon by the shortest route but this involved clambering over some dry stone walls. There were better paths if you went up behind the house and then contoured round to the Watkin Path.
I like exploring the remnants of the mining operations such as where the wagon railway would have taken the slate down.
Although the Watkin Path is very interesting it is quite a lot of ascent to get to the top of Snowdon (because it starts from a lower base). Luckily there was a Sherpa Bus that went past the house at a convenient time, just after breakfast. So we could get the bus to Pen-y-Pass. Much more convenient than the people who missed breakfast to drive there before the car park filled up.
From Pen-y-Pass there are lots of ways to walk back to the house. If you don't want too much ascent you can go around Snowdon via Llyn Gwynant over Elephant Rock.
Or you can join the continuous stream of ill equipped people and dogs on the Miners Track
or Pyg Track (I never went via Crib Goch too dangerous)
Picture of Miners Track from Pyg Track:
Across the road from Craflwyn Hall is Sygun Copper Mine museum and another nice walk was to walk past the museum and over the hills to Nantmor. Then back to Beddgelert next to the narrow gauge heritage railway.
On the top you can see the old mine equipment. In this case it seems to be some overhead transportation system.
Another good, but strenuous, walk is over Moel Hebog. This is on the other side of Beddgelert. Go up across the narrow gauge heritage railway
As you climb up you can look down to Beddgelert
And even higher you can look down the valley toward Craflwyn Hall
On the way back you have to make sure you don't miss a turning and end up in the forest.
Then back via Beddgelert
Craflwyn Hall
It was a fantastic location but from HFs point of view I think they made the correct decision not renewing the lease from NT.
I remember being there in Oct 2019 and Richard was showing us the plans (I assume HF had commissioned architects drawings). The managers office (biggest room in the house) was going to be a guest bedroom and there was going to be a two story extension on the other side of the house with guest bedrooms and a (much smaller) managers office.
The problem was that, even with these extra bedrooms, the finances would not work without the stable block being fully occupied and the NT would not allow much change to the stable block.
Some of the rooms in the stable block were truly awful. I think some people liked the two level rooms, with the spiral stairs, as a sort of adventure but if you had to get up in the night and negotiate spiral stairs or if a couple had booked a double room and found themselves separated by spiral stairs they were not happy.
The worst room was room 17 it was an overheated, windowless cell with a grinding noise which comes on at various times in the night. So even if you get to sleep despite the heat the grinding will wake you up (I think they had one masher for the whole stable block). In fact there were 3 rooms like this connected by a sort of internal corridor. Room 17 was the worst but they all had underfloor heating that could not be turned off.
Usually room 17 was given to leaders (so that's not a problem) but on a members break or if the leaders come with partners then HF reservations allocated it to guests. Although room 17 did not have any outside windows it did come equipped with a long pole which you could use to open the skylight, with HF's flair for room design they had fixed a TV to the wall below it, so if it started raining in the night everything got soaked.
I was put in room 17. After spending 1 night there I refused to stay in that room, after a lot of discussion Richard said that someone in a premium room had failed to arrive so I moved from the worst bedroom to the best bedroom. I was told that I had to move back to room 17 on Monday because someone else had booked the room. I refused to move, Richard said there were no other options, I said I wanted it escalated to someone high up in HF. Nothing could be done until Monday when the HQ staff were back at work. On Monday morning I was walking down the drive to start my walk and Richard called me to his office. So I was standing in his office wearing my boots and all the walking gear and we telephoned HF HQ and started working our way up through the HF hierarchy to people with impressive sounding job titles like 'head of UK houses'. The 'phone was being passed back and forward between Richard and me, I was refusing to move back to room 17, when I passed the phone back to Richard I could hear her saying "Why am I getting involved in this, its your job to sort this out" when the phone was passed back to me I tried to explain that the problem was all created by HF HQ but I get the impression that sorting out HQ mess-ups is the house managers job. In the end it was decided that there was changeover in room 4 so the incoming guest who was supposed to go to room 4 was put in room 17 and I was moved to room 4. I didn't tell this chap of my part in his allocation to room 17 but we heard every day at breakfast how bad the room was, but he did say that it gets better after night 3 because the sleep deprivation builds up until you can sleep through anything. I hope he doesn't read this, I don't think he will because it was his first HF holiday and he said that, after that experience, it would be his last.
Any comments on this page? Why not post on this Facebook forum?
Other Documents on this site
Click on the following for more information
| Former HF Houses | |
|---|---|
| Conwy (1914- 2011) |  |
| Newlands (1914- 1987) |  |
| Swanage (1947- 1995) |  |
| Isle of Arran (1925- ) |  |
| Scarborough (1954- 1998) |  |
| Lulworth |  |
| Beddgelert | |
| New Inns |  |
| Penrith |  |
| Milford-on-Sea |  |
| Web page design and content © 2025 M J Baker.. |
About This SiteHere is some history of former HF houses I have visited (there are also some pages about getting to, and walking from, HF houses without using a car). Over the years I have had holidays in houses that HF have closed. I think it would be good if there were somewhere on the HF website where peoples memories could be stored and made available online. I know that HF have a paper history archive at Newfield Hall and there is an online book by Harry Wroe but I would see this as something HF could do which is more of a online community thing. If you find any errors why not let others know by putting a post on the HF Holiday Fans ( unofficial) Facebook forum. I will try to quote such posts here so they don't get lost. |