After reading about the amphora you may be interested in a site where a quantity of Roman coins were found. They date from the reign of Constantine The Great who was the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity ( from 306 to 337.) Some coins from this period were discovered wrapped in sheets of lead in an old stone drain when a section of the Rhos Fynach’s garden was being cleared for the construction of the Rhos Abbey Hotel in 1898.
On this site the St Trillo’s Court apartment building now stands next door to Rhos Fynach. Rhos Abbey Hotel existed until 1991 when it was demolished, and at the back there is now an orchard where some of us remember the wonderful open air swimming pool. Centuries ago the monks also had an orchard in their grounds. They were keen agriculturalists, and the Fynach was one of many outlying farms attached to the Abbey at Aberconwy, established by the Cistercian monks at the end of the twelfth century. The weir trapped salmon at Rhos Point for centuries, and perhaps the successful fishing was why the monks settled here.
Rhos Fynach and all the low land from the coast of Rhos on sea past the cricket club as far as the golf course was marshland, where the Afon Ganol river lay. These days sea defences protect the area from the flooding which regularly happened, and within living memory! But imagine this, there was a time when the high land at Abbey Road, the Fynach and Trillo chapel were virtually an island !
It is said boats were once able to reach Mochdre by this route, and the river split into two, one arm flowing out to sea by Penrhyn Bay. A map of 1720 shows a large lake and the other flowing down what is now Penrhyn Avenue, entering the sea at the bottom of Rhos Road. A Lodge cottage for Rhos Fynach (later called the ‘Rising Gull’ ) used to stand on the corner of Rhos Road.
