Auguste Guyard

The Town
The Beginnings
The Name
The Port
Roads & Railway

Historical People
John Ruskin
Fanny Talbot
Auguste Guyard
Major H.W. Tilman
Harold Godfrey Lowe
W. W. Greener

Historical Events
Bronze Bell Wreck
Battle of Barmouth

Miscellaneous
Barmouth Milestones
Old Newspaper Report

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Monsieur Georges Rech, Director of the Archives départementales de la Haute-Saône for providing the above picture of Auguste Guyard.

In one of the walls of a narrow path above the cottages of old Barmouth is a metal plaque honouring Auguste Guyard and marking his grave. Often referred to as "The Frenchman" in the Barmouth that I gew up in, Monsieur Guyard, an educationalist and philosopher, fled the seige of Paris during the Franco-Prussian war and became the tenant of one of the Fanny Talbot cottages, 2, Rock Gardens, at the invitation of Mrs. Talbot.

M. Guyard had attempted to create a 'commune modele' in his home village of Frotey-Les-Vesoul (Haute-Saône), where he was born in 1808. His aims closely resembled those of John Ruskin. He  became a popular figure in Barmouth and grew herbs and vegetables in the terraced gardens of 'The Rock' as well as medicinal plants to help the poor. He also had a way with animals and tamed a hawk and a Jackdaw. His grave (He died in 1882) lies above the cottages in Barmouth with an inscription in French, Welsh and English which reads:

"Here lodged a sower who
To his grave, sowed the seeds
Of truth, of right, of beauty, 
With obsession.

In a thousand struggles
With pen and body
Such labours are not rewarded
In this world."