ALEX Jones visits Yr Ysgwrn to see the steps being taken to preserve the former home of acclaimed poet Hedd Wyn...

PROGRESS is being made to keep the front door to the home of Wales’ most influential poet open.

Yr Ysgwrn, formerly home to Hedd Wyn, an acclaimed wordsmith from Trawsfynydd who died in the First World War, is currently undergoing renovation before it reopens as a state-of-the-art interpretation centre next year.

Born Ellis Humphrey Evans, Hedd Wyn (whose bardic name translates as Blessed Peace) wrote prose which focuses on the effects of the First World War on Trawsfynydd and the landscape of rural Wales.

Self-taught in rhyme after leaving school to work the family land at 14, the bard’s poetry ranges from the romantic to the torrid effects of war – none more so than in Hedd Wyn’s magnum opus Rhyfel (The War).

The poem, decrying the barbarity of conflict and senseless death, won the young farmer a prestigious chair in the 1917 Eisteddfod, but Hedd Wyn never claimed his prize.

The reason? He was one of the hundreds of thousands who died in the battle of Passchendaele on Flanders Field just six weeks prior.

The chair was subsequently draped in a solemn black cloth and the prize seat became known as Y Gadair Ddu - The Black Chair.

This shocking waste of life rippled through Trawsfynydd and the surrounding area and a sad sense of what might have been still pervades the area to this day.

Of course, nowhere was Hedd Wyn’s loss feel more prevalently than at his family home, Yr Ysgwrn.

The Grade II-listed cottage, originally built in the 1830s, had served the Evans family for several generations, but is now used to remember Hedd Wyn.

Since the end of the First World War, tens of thousands have made their way to Meirionnydd to pay tribute to the Welsh bard and study the property where he grew up.

Not only does the house represent Hedd Wyn’s roots, it also typifies the important period of social, cultural and agricultural change for north Wales at the turn of the 20th century.

Until the ‘70s the property was still inhabited by the Evans family. Hedd Wyn’s nephew, Gerald Williams, was the last relative to live in the old cottage.

Read the full story in this week’s Meirionnydd edition of the Cambrian News