Denbigh Moors

The Denbigh Moors (Mynydd Hiraethog) are situated at the northern end of the Cambrian Mountains and they comprise the southern, upland parts of the large, natural block of land lying between the two major river valleys of the Clwyd and the Conwy in North Wales.

Summary

_{John Osley ©CCW}

Reference number: HLW (C) 5

OS map: Landranger 116

Unitary authority: Conwy, Denbighshire

It is a bleak and deserted area of rolling moorland with several valleys cutting across the northern and eastern flanks.

However, the area described here as a landscape is only the central and western parts of that upland massif, comprising a large, and in Wales an increasingly rare, survival of an uninterrupted extent of heather moorland that was deliberately managed and maintained as a grouse moor and a shooting estate in the early part of the 20th century. It has been selected to exclude most of the eastern part containing the extensive forestry plantations that form part of Cloclaenog Forest.

This moorland landscape, like many other upland areas of Wales, has its origins in the upland economies of the Neolithic and Bronze Age or, as recent interpretations of archaeological evidence from elsewhere in Britain suggest, possibly in the economy of the preceding Mesolithic period when it has been suggested that areas of the moorland might have been deliberately burnt and cleared for hunting. The prehistoric landscape of the uplands was modified subsequently through continued seasons of summer grazing, based on temporary summer settlements or hafodau sited in the valleys and along the edges of the moor.

A full published description for this landscape area is available as a pdf download within the Related Articles section below.

Principal area designations:

The area is almost entirely within Mynydd Hiraethog Site of Special Scientific Interest.

Criteria: 3

Contents and significance:

A visually striking and extensive rolling moorland landscape comprising the central and western part of the Denbigh Moors situated between the major river valleys of the Clwyd and Conwy in North Wales. The area represents a large, and in Wales an increasingly rare, survival of an uninterrupted extent of heather moorland, deliberately managed and maintained as a grouse moor and a shooting estate in the early part of the 20th century, the greater part overlying archaeological evidence of successive periods of land use from the prehistoric, medieval and later periods.