Opening Times

All year round from dawn until dusk each day. Between October 1st and March 1st the trail may have to be closed on some days to allow woodland management works to take place.

Contact Details

David & Anwen Roberts
Bach y Graig, Tremeirchion,
St Asaph, LL17 0UH

Tel: 01745 730627
Fax: 01745 730971

E-mail: anwen@bachygraig.co.uk
Website: www.bachygraig.co.uk

In 1295 the woodlands belonged to King Edward the First, part of the large area of land that had come to him after the conquests of Wales in 1282 and 1285. At this time Edward was setting up a new borough or town next to his newly-built castle at Rhuddlan, about five miles (eight kilometers) north-north-west of Bach y Graig. To help the townspeople, on November 30 1295 Edward gave them the right to take timber from Bach y Graig to build houses and make fences.

Written records show that Bach y Graig was a forest, one of a network of parks, woodlands and forests in North East Wales that provided timber and other products for Edward's castles at Flint and Rhuddlan. A forest was an area of land under forest law and was not always wooded. Forest law controlled who could use the forest and what they could use it for. Payment was made for each and every use. In 1328, for example, Robert de Haurthyn paid twenty shillings for the pannage of Bach y Graig. Pannage was the right for pigs to feed on fallen acorns from oak trees growing in the forest. Foresters were paid a penny a day to protect the forest and make sure that forest law was followed.

By the middle of the fourteenth century written records show that Bach y Graig formed part of the land held by Edward the Black Prince, as the earl of Chester and Flint. A number of records dating between 1352 and 1362 refer to the Prince's gift of withered trunks, stunted oaks and dry and leafless oaks from Bach y Graig for fuel to people staying in Rhuddlan castle.