The National Trust’s new Ogwen base. “in the middle of everything spectacular.”
The National Trust is one of the global leaders in addressing climate change. Environmental shifts threaten everything the Trust protects: its land, its structures and most of all its heritage, as examined in its recent 2015 report “Forecast Changeable.” Keith Jones is the Trust’s Environmental Adviser, who recently attended the landmark COP21 in Paris and strives to make the Trust as sustainable as possible. We are pleased to share his work here on The AngloFiles Magazine.
By Keith Jones
We have been working with the team at the National Trust’s new Ogwen base at the foot of Cwm Idwal, Tryfan and Pen yr Ole Wen between the Carneddau and Glyderau massifs. The new site is in a transformation phase. The main building is being operated in partnership with Outward Bound trust in order to assist young people to get out into the mountain environment. The older building next to the Idwal river we have the new National Trust Rangers base for this spectacular area.
My interest is the heritage of energy generation and this site is home to plenty of energy history. The old building was the site for a mill which used to produce honing stones to sharpen ‘stuff’ (there is a little quarry behind the visitor center as testament to this).
The rangers building was previously home to an extensive water wheel.
The old building was resplendent with a quite a large overshot water wheel. Later, a pelton hydro was installed into the site (two separate accounts of its existence right up until the 70’s). If anyone has any images of the system I would be grateful for a copy.
Today, the building gets energy from a state-of-the-art heat pump.
The twenty-first century has now caught us up and thanks to our friends from Panasonic we have the latest Panasonic air source heat pump installed and warming the building. We are looking at the rest of site for options to reduce the buildings environmental impact even further. More to come!
