Vinegar Hill, Caernarfon
The road named Vinegar Hill originally ran from the priory houses on Bangor Street to Balaclava Road, near the Victoria Dock. The Home Bargains store is on part of the site of the priory houses, and its car park covers what was the upper section of Vinegar Hill.
Halfway along, a bridge carried Vinegar Hill over the Caernarfon to Afonwen railway, built in the late 1860s. The railway route in this vicinity is now a minor road but the bridge survives, for pedestrians and cyclists only. Today’s surviving section of the street is sometimes identified as Priory Terrace, and sometimes (including by the Ordnance Survey) as Vinegar Hill.
Many places in Great Britain are named Vinegar Hill after the place near Enniscorthy where hundreds of Irish people died when British forces suppressed a rebellion in 1798. The hill’s Gaelic name is Cnoc Fhiodh na gCaor. Fiodh na gCaor is pronounced ‘ffi-na-gêr’, which became “vinegar” in the speech of British soldiers.
The name may have been given to the street in Caernarfon by soldiers who rested in Caernarfon before or after crossing the Irish Sea for tours of duty in Ireland.
With thanks to Caernarfon Civic Society
Postcode: LL55 1AR View Location Map