Set up by members of Hedd Wyn’s family, the trust will be carrying on the promise made to Hedd Wyn’s mother, Mary Evans, to ‘keep the door open’ to welcome all who want to learn about her eldest son’s outstanding achievements and see the magnificent Chair he won in the 1917 National Eisteddfod. In that year, Hedd Wyn, a pacifist by nature, had enlisted with the Royal Welch Fusiliers to save his brother, Bob, who was being called up. At the time, he was writing his poem ‘The Hero’ in preparation for entry in the National Eisteddfod.
Hedd Wyn was a bard of significant renown, having won several Chairs in local Eisteddfods and having a reputation for being a master of ‘cynghanedd’ – the strict rules of poetry writing. He was determined to capture the Chair in the 1917 National Eisteddfod, and his efforts were not in vain. However, before the adjudication was given in September, Hedd Wyn had been killed in the first battle of Passchendaele in Flanders at the end of July. He never sat in the exquisitely carved Chair he had won. His death was mourned throughout Wales, and it symbolised the tragic loss felt across the nation, which had lost so many of its sons in the Great War.
The Ysgwrn is the farm where Hedd Wyn was raised, and the farmhouse has been kept as it was when Hedd Wyn was alive. As such, it gives an insight into the way of life in a working farm in the late 1800s. The last of the family to farm the land was Gerald Williams. It was he who passed the farm to the Snowdonia National Park Authority in 2012 so that it could share the wonderful history as the family had done. Gerald was recognised for his heritage custodianship in 2012 when he was awarded an MBE and later in 2018, when the Rt Hon Carwyn Jones, First Minister of Wales, honoured him with the First Minister’s Special Award in the St David Awards.
For more information on Hedd Wyn:
Hedd Wyn - The Lost War Poet
