Conwy (disambiguation)

Conwy is a walled town in north Wales.

Conwy may also refer to these proximate things:

Defunct administrative areas:

See also

Conwy

Coordinates: 53°17′N 3°50′W / 53.28°N 3.83°W / 53.28; -3.83

Conwy (Welsh pronunciation: [ˈkɔnʊɨ]; formerly known in English as Conway) is a walled market town and community in Conwy County Borough on the north coast of Wales. The town, which faces Deganwy across the River Conwy, formerly lay in Gwynedd and prior to that in Caernarfonshire. The community, which includes Deganwy and Llandudno Junction, had a population of 14,208 at the 2001 census, and is a popular tourist destination. The population rose to 14,753 at the 2011 census. The Welsh language can be heard in widespread, casual and official usage.

Conwy Castle and the town walls were built, on the instruction of Edward I of England, between 1283 and 1289, as part of his conquest of the principality of Wales. Conwy was the original site of Aberconwy Abbey, founded by Llywelyn the Great. Edward and his troops took over the abbey site and moved the monks down the Conwy valley to a new site at Maenan, establishing Maenan Abbey. The parish church still retains some parts of the original abbey church in the east and west walls. English settlers were given incentives to move to the walled garrison town, which for decades the Welsh were forbidden from entering.

Conwy (UK Parliament constituency)

Coordinates: 53°11′28″N 3°41′17″W / 53.191°N 3.688°W / 53.191; -3.688

Conwy was an electoral constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It returned one Member of Parliament (MP) by the single-member district plurality (also known as first-past-the-post) system of voting.

The constituency was created for the 1950 general election, and abolished for the 2010 general election.

History

It was a marginal between the Conservative Party and the Labour Party throughout its existence.

The Conwy Welsh Assembly constituency was created with the same boundaries as the Conwy House of Commons constituency in 1999.

Boundaries

The constituency was, geographically, relatively small for its region, as it followed and tended to keep to the coast, taking in parts of two separate densely populated coastal conurbations.

As well as the walled castle town of Conwy from which it bore its name, the constituency mainly comprised the popular holiday resort and retail centre of Llandudno to the east, and the city of Bangor, which is home to the University of Wales, Bangor, to the west. It also included the smaller coastal towns of Penmaenmawr and Llanfairfechan, as well as some sparser inland areas including former slate-quarrying communities in the Ogwen Valley.

Conwy County Borough

Conwy County Borough (Welsh: Bwrdeistref Sirol Conwy) is a unitary authority area in the north of Wales.

Geography

It contains the major settlements of Llandudno, Llandudno Junction, Llanrwst, Betws-y-Coed, Conwy, Colwyn Bay, Abergele, Penmaenmawr and Llanfairfechan, and has a total population of 115,000, the vast majority of which lives along the coast.

The River Conwy, after which the county borough is named, lies wholly within the area: rising in Snowdonia and flowing through Llanrwst and Trefriw en route to the Irish Sea by Conwy. The river here marks the border between the historic counties of Caernarfonshire and Denbighshire.

One third of the land area of the county borough lies in the Snowdonia national park, and the council appoint three of the 18 members of the Snowdonia National Park Authority. Its total area is 1,130 square km, making it slightly larger than Hong Kong.

Welsh language

According to the 2001 Census 39.7% of the population of the county borough have "one or more skills" in the Welsh language, which ranks it 5th out of 22 principal areas in Wales.