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Most of the man-made objects included in our Wonder of Wales vote
provoke feelings of awe because of their large size. But here Dewi
Davies, of Tourism Partnership North Wales, explains why small is
wonderful in the case of Britain's smallest house, in Conwy.
 THE
smallest house in Great
Britain measures only 6ft wide by 8ft deep by 10ft high, over
two floors. Yet it managed to house a man called Jones - a fisherman
who was over 6ft tall!
So why should we call the smallest house one of the new jewels in
the crown? It certainly is a jewel in the crown of Conwy, and Conwy
epitomises what we have in many tourism destinations in Wales. Conwy
has a number of facets that add up to form a brilliant impact - the
castle, the 13th-century walls, the quay, the river, Plas Mawr,
Aberconwy House, Thomas Telford's Suspension Bridge, the Royal
Cambrian Academy of Art and Conwy Butterfly Jungle. The smallest
house is one of those facets that gives people reason to visit Conwy
again and again.
Another wonder is how the one-up-one-down was hewn out of a
preciously small piece of land and managed to survive as a dwelling
until 1900. The most modern amenity was a faucet, and the tenant had
to dash to the outside lavatory. Our standard of accommodation and
living, plus our expectations of life, have all made great progress
during the last century here in Wales. Mind you with property prices
sky high are we not in danger of reversing the property size?
In
London's Haringey Park, an 8ft-wide kitchen extension is about
to be converted into a small town house.
We are not the only ones to have a 'smallest house'. There are
claimants across the continents. From
Belfast we have a Baptist Church house at 8ft wide; from
Warsaw, Poland, we have a smallest house built in Neo-Classical
style; from
Vienna we have a smallest house only 5ft wide. But we in Wales
have the acclaimed international record per the Guinness Book of
Records - the best in class - and that global prominence. Not bad
for a 540sq ft cube in Conwy.
In a nation where we have more than 600 attractions, a region
where we have World Heritage Sites in Conwy, Caernarfon, Beaumaris
and, hopefully, Pontcysyllte aqueduct within the next year - it's a
true wonder that our smallest asset captures great widespread
interest.
Online, it ranks alongside global quirks such as a hotel in the
shape of a crocodile at
Ayers Rock in the Australian outback, the 10-room Ice Hotel in
Lapland, and a six-storey hotel in the shape of an elephant in
Margate, New Jersey. Click on to Google - and key in 'smallest house
Conwy' and up pop 20,000 listings. Not bad, eh! Many businesses want
to include it in their search engine meta data. Now that's an
attraction that has really kept pace with the modern world.
So the smallest house strides into the 21st century as a major
(and minor!) global tourist attraction and it deserves ranking as
one of the Wonders of Wales.
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