County of Gwynedd, Wales Genealogy

Wales Counties of Wales

Guide to  ancestry, family history and genealogy parish registers, transcripts, census records, birth records, marriage records, and death records.



The county of Gwynedd, in the north-west of Wales, was formed during the controversial re-organisation of local government in Wales in 1974. It consisted of the whole of the historic counties of Anglesey and Caernarfonshire; the majority of Merionethshire (with the exception of the Edeirnion Rural District which became part of the newly formed county of Clwyd); and the Conwy Valley parishes of Llanrwst, Llansanffraid Glan Conwy, Eglwysbach, Llanddoged, Llanrwst and Tir Ifan from Denbighshire.

This new county was divided into five districts:


 * Aberconwy
 * Arfon
 * Anglesey
 * Dwyfor
 * Meirionnydd

The county town was Caernarfon.

The county was named after the independent Kingdom of Gwynedd which covered the north-west of Wales from the end of the Roman period until the 13th Century.



Further re-organisation of local government in Wales abolished the county of Gwynedd, and its five districts, on 1 April 1996.

The county of Gwynedd was split up into three new Unitary Authorities:


 * Gwynedd (with very different boundaries to the previous county of the same name)
 * Anglesey (with the same boundaries as the historic county of the same name)
 * County Borough of Conwy (also taking in parts of the former county of Clwyd)

Caernarfon remained the county town.