On the quay at Conwy, wedged against the town wall in a row of larger buildings, is a red-painted house measuring 3.05 metres high by 1.8 metres wide — about ten feet by six.
It holds the Guinness World Record as the smallest house in Great Britain, and it is a genuine house: occupied continuously from the sixteenth century until 1900.
Two rooms, one above the other.
Downstairs: a coal fire, a water tap, a bench and a small amount of storage.
Upstairs, reached by a ladder: a bed recess in the wall and a small space beside it.
That is the entire building. It was a quayside cottage, of a type that filled in the gaps between larger houses along the wall, and every other example in the row was demolished. This one survived because it was already a curiosity by the time the others went.
The last resident was a fisherman named Robert Jones, and the detail everybody remembers is that he was six foot three — 1.9 metres — and could not stand upright in his own home.
He was living there in 1900 when the council declared the house unfit for human habitation and served notice. Jones moved out. Rather than see it demolished, the owners kept it and opened it as an attraction, and it has been one ever since.
The family who own it still do, and the woman who takes the money at the door is generally the one who tells you the story — visitors consistently praise the welcome, which for an attraction that takes two minutes is a large part of the value.
It takes about two minutes. You go in, you look at the downstairs room, you look up the ladder, you come out. Adults cannot comfortably get upstairs.
It costs a couple of pounds.
At that price, for that curiosity, in that position, it is entirely reasonable — visitors describe it as worth it for the oddity alone. It is not a museum and does not pretend to be, and the online criticism that it is “small for the money” misunderstands what is being sold: the whole point is that it is small.
There is a Welsh lady in traditional costume on the door in season, which is a piece of Victorian tourist theatre that has become part of the thing.
Conwy Quay, on the waterfront inside the town walls, five minutes from Conwy Castle.
The quay is the pleasant part of Conwy — fishing boats, the mussel trade that has worked this estuary since Roman times, seafood stalls, and views across the water to Deganwy and the Great Orme.
Admission: a few pounds, cash and card.
Time: two to five minutes.
Season: roughly Easter to October; closed in winter.
Access: the doorway and interior are extremely small; it is not accessible, and larger adults will find it a tight fit.
Getting there: Conwy Quay, five minutes’ walk from Conwy station and from the castle; fifteen minutes from Llandudno by road or train.
Conwy Castle and the town walls are five minutes away.
Plas Mawr on the High Street is the best-preserved Elizabethan townhouse in Britain.
Aberconwy House, National Trust, is a fourteenth-century merchant’s house.
The mussel stalls and seafood on the quay.
Telford’s suspension bridge of 1826, alongside the castle.
About 3.05 metres high by 1.8 metres wide — ten feet by six — with two tiny rooms, one above the other.
Yes, from the sixteenth century until 1900, when it was declared unfit for habitation.
A fisherman called Robert Jones, six foot three tall, who could not stand upright indoors.
Two to five minutes. It costs a couple of pounds and is a curiosity rather than a museum.
On Conwy Quay, inside the town walls, five minutes from the castle.