Llandudno Urban Studies

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Investigation 2: Llandudno Urban Studies

By Danny Emerson 11XF

Aims:

  1. To study Llandudno as a retail and tourist centre.
  2. To establish Llandudno’s sphere of influence
  3. To study the land-use pattern of Llandudno
  4. To look at the role of the retail park

Hypothesis:

  1. Land uses will be in distinct zones e.g. residential, industrial
  2. Llandudno has a large sphere of influence and this serves the whole of the Aberconwy district.
  3. The number of pedestrians can identify the central business district (CBD).
  4.  The type of retail and service functions within it can identify the CBD.
  5. The Retail Park will have an impact on the shoppers and the CBD.

Background Information:

                        Llandudno was originally a small fishing village at the foot of the Great Orme. A man called Lord Mostyn owned the area between the Great Orme and the mainland. In 1849 the area that he owned was divided into 176 lots and sold off for auction and were sold to some hoteliers. The first hotels opened in the 1850’s and were set along the North Beach. In 1858 the railway line was built to Llandudno Junction on the London to Holyhead main line. In the 1880’s development accelerated massively with the increasing numbers of people given holiday entitlement. In 1875 the pier opened for steamer traffic and in 1891 reached a population of 7’300.

          The development here takes place on a grid iron pattern, which was typical of Victorian town planning. It had two axes: One which is Mostyn Street (the main shopping street) and Gloddaeth Avenue (a broad boulevard linking the west and the north beaches. It was intended that Gloddaeth Avenue was to be lined with fashionable hotels and assembly rooms, and that the west beach would develop as successfully as the north beach, which had Britain’s widest and most spacious promenade. Britain’s class structure was clear in the way the resort was laid out:

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     The promenade of the North beach had the large fashionable hotels for the upper middle classes that were met at the station by horse drawn carriages. The Grand hotel at the entrance to the pier was the best of them all; on the foothills of the Great Orme were the large hotels and guest houses for the middle classes; inland from the station and the town were the boarding houses for the ‘artisan’ classes (now known as the skilled manual classes). Thousands of day-trippers arrived by excursion train and paddle steamer from the towns of Merseyside and Lancashire.

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