Barmouth historian Hugh Roberts sent this picture in to Timewatch last month.

Knowing it was dated 17 September, 1906, and about the handwritten line on the front - ‘Asserting rights of way over estuary walk-Bontddu’ – we asked readers for more information.

Dai Sheppard from Dolgellau has been in touch.

“The photograph arose from a dispute between local residents and the owners of Farchynys and Caerdeon estates, a little lower down the Mawddach estuary,” he said.

“The locals maintained the paths leading from near the Halfway Hotel along the estuary towards Barmouth were ancient public rights of way but the relatively new incoming landowners were adamant there was no right of way. It seems the dispute had been ongoing for some time but came to a head in 1906 when a bridge giving access to the paths was destroyed by the landowners. The dispute escalated when the gamekeeper for Farchynys claimed he was assaulted when he attempted to prevent three local youths from using one of the paths.

“At a public meeting convened by the Rural District Council witnesses in their 70s and 80s declared they had been using the paths since childhood and that local fishermen used the paths to gain access to the estuary with their boats. An interesting counter argument was that since the building of the railway on the southern side of the estuary about 40 years earlier, the main channel of the Mawddach had moved to the northern side obliterating any paths which may have held ancient rights.

“The mass ‘assertion of the public’s right of way’ which Hugh’s photograph shows was held in September. Newspaper reports of scores of walkers suggest that the photograph is of only some of the protestors.

"The dispute, which involved county, district and parish councils was widely reported at the time in Y Dydd and the Cambrian News.

“A glance at a modern Ordnance Survey map suggests the landowners’ view prevailed as there do not appear to be any public rights of way running westwards of Bontddu on the banks of the Mawddach.”

See this week’s north editions for the full story, in shops and online on Thursday