Llanrwst takes its name from
Saint Grwst, a 6th-century saint. The first church dedicated to him at Llanrwst was on a site now occupied by Seion Methodist Chapel, between Station Road and Cae Llan. A second
church of St Grwst was built on a new site a short distance south of its predecessor, on the banks of the Conwy. The site was donated for the purpose in about 1170 by Rhun ap Nefydd Hardd, a member of the royal family of
Gwynedd. The second church was replaced by the current building on the same site in the late 15th century. Llanrwst developed around the
wool trade, and for a long time the price of wool for the whole of Britain was set here. The growth of the village in the 13th century was considerably aided by an edict by
Edward I of England (who built
Conwy Castle) prohibiting any Welshman from trading within of the town of
Conwy. Llanrwst, located some from that town, was strategically placed to benefit from this. During the
13th century wars between the Welsh and English rulers, Llanrwst was for a time a border town, with the River Conwy serving as a boundary between English and Welsh rule in the 1240s and 1250s, and again in the 1270s and 1280s. The town's ambiguous status during this time gave rise to the local saying
"Cymru, Lloegr a Llanrwst" (Wales, England and Llanrwst). The saying was used as the title of a 1989 song by local band,
Y Cyrff. The parish was also contested between different ecclesiastical jurisdictions; whilst the Conwy was generally the boundary between the dioceses of
Bangor and
St Asaph, the parish of Llanrwst straddled the river. In 1276,
Llywelyn ap Gruffudd,
Prince of Wales, claimed the whole parish for the Bangor diocese as part of trying to assert Welsh rule over the area. This was disputed by the bishop of St Asaph, who appealed to the
Archbishop of Canterbury and the
Pope. Matters resolved after Llywelyn's death in 1282 and the subsequent conquest of the Welsh territories by the English crown. The parish of Llanrwst was thereafter allowed to straddle the two dioceses, with the part east of the Conwy (including the town and parish church) being in the diocese of St Asaph, and the part west of the Conwy (including
Gwydir Forest) being in the diocese of Bangor. In a survey in 1334, Llanrwst was described as one of three
boroughs in the
Lordship of Denbigh, with the others being
Denbigh and
Abergele. Boroughs were towns with certain trading rights and judicial powers. Some boroughs were subordinate only to the monarch rather than any intervening
lord of the manor; these were sometimes termed 'free boroughs', and included places such as
Caernarfon and Conwy. Modern writers sometimes claim that Llanrwst was a free borough. The origins and extent of Llanrwst's claim to borough status are unclear, but it appears to have been already in decline by the time of the 1334 survey, and Llanrwst's borough status did not endure. The Grade I-
listed Pont Fawr, a narrow, three-arched stone bridge said to have been designed by
Inigo Jones, was built in 1636 by
Sir Richard Wynn (son of Sir John Wynn) of
Gwydir Castle. It links the town with Gwydir, a
manor house dating from 1492, a 15th-century
courthouse known as
Tu Hwnt i'r Bont, and a road from nearby
Trefriw. North of the village is the site of a house, Plas Madoc, which was the home of Colonel John Higson. A friend of
Henry Pochin of
Bodnant, Higson developed a garden at Plas Madoc which may have had input from, or been influenced by,
Henry Ernest Milner. The house has been demolished but the garden remain and are listed at Grade II on the
Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales. Llanrwst hosted the
National Eisteddfod in 1951, 1989 and 2019. It is sometimes said that Llanrwst sought to join the
United Nations in 1946 or 1947 as an independent state. The earliest published version found of the story is a mention in a newspaper article from 1992, which gave no dates or further detail, but mentioned that Llanrwst "once discussed applying for membership of the United Nations". ==Geography==