About Llangollen
The history, geography, and character of Llangollen.
Llangollen is a small Denbighshire town in the Dee valley, built around the bridge over the river, with the Llangollen Canal running along the hillside above it and Castell Dinas Brân on the hill above that. It is a town that hosts: the International Musical Eisteddfod brings the world to the Royal International Pavilion every July, the food festival and the Fringe take their own weekends, and the heritage railway and the horse-drawn boats work most of the year. The double l at the start of the name is the Welsh ll, not an English l.
History & Heritage
The river and the bridge
Llangollen Bridge spans the Dee at the north end of the main street, and most of the town sits within a few minutes of it: Bridge Street and its hotels, the Corn Mill on Dee Lane with its water wheel, the heritage railway station on Abbey Road just to the north-west, and the canal wharf up Wharf Hill. The river is white water as it comes through, and the rafting operators' listings name Town Falls and Serpent's Tail among its rapids.
The canal and the World Heritage Site
The Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal World Heritage Site, inscribed in 2009, covers 11 miles of canal from the Horseshoe Falls west of Llangollen to Gledrid Bridge near Chirk Bank, through Denbighshire, Wrexham county and Shropshire. Telford's Horseshoe Falls weir, about 140 metres long, feeds the canal. The aqueduct, Telford and Jessop's nineteen cast-iron spans 38.4 metres above the Dee, is in Wrexham county about five and a half kilometres east of the town.
The Eisteddfod and the Pavilion
The International Musical Eisteddfod is the town's big week, held at the Royal International Pavilion on Abbey Road, which the Canal & River Trust dates to 1992; the first festival was in 1947. In 2026 it ran from 7 to 12 July, and the 80th festival runs from Wednesday 7 to Sunday 11 July 2027, with the Llangollen80 gala concert on Saturday 10 July. The town's secondary school is Ysgol Dinas Brân.
After the railway company
Llangollen Railway plc went into administration in 2021. The railway's own history says services were suspended that year, the Llangollen Railway Trust took full responsibility, and trains ran again later in 2021. The permanent Corwen Central station opened on 2 June 2023, and the line now runs as the Llangollen and Corwen Railway, about 10 miles up the valley through Berwyn, Glyndyfrdwy and Carrog to Corwen.