History
In the late 18th century, Richard Pennant, 1st Baron Penrhyn, built a road from Bangor through the Nant Ffrancon and Dyffryn Ogwen to Betws-y-Coed, and eventually through to Shrewsbury (in use by 1798). In 1801, Lord Penrhyn built the then named Capel Curig Inn. In 1808 the Mail coach which ran from Holyhead to Shrewsbury began running via Capel Curig. The Mail coach ceased operation in 1848 following the opening of the Chester and Holyhead Railway. The inn wasn't built on the road (now the A5), but some distance from it on the present site to facilitate enjoyment of the superb view of Llynnau Mymbyr (the lakes) and the Snowdon horseshoe. Sometime between 1869 and 1871 the building's name was changed yet again from the Capel Curig Hotel to the Royal Hotel. Since its opening in 1801 the famous guests over the years were Queen Victoria, and Kings Edward VII, George V, and Edward VIII. Other well-known people who visited included Charles Lennox, 4th Duke of Richmond on September 6, 1807 (there is still a plaque commemorating his visit, which is still there to this day), Sir Joseph Paxton (1856) (designer of The Crystal Palace), Bishop Samuel Wilberforce (1858), Lord Byron (1913) and Sir Walter Scott (1818). Some distinguished visitors to the hotel etched their names into the windows of the then cocktail bar (now the reception area): these were still in place into the 1970s.
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“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)
“In history the great moment is, when the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, with all his hairy Pelasgic strength directed on his opening sense of beauty;—and you have Pericles and Phidias,—and not yet passed over into the Corinthian civility. Everything good in nature and in the world is in that moment of transition, when the swarthy juices still flow plentifully from nature, but their astrigency or acridity is got out by ethics and humanity.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)