Bala

Bala is a market-town and urban district of Gwynedd, North Wales, at the north end of Bala Lake, 17 miles (27 km) north-east of Dolgellau[?], with a population (1901) of 1554. It is little more than one wide street, Stryt Fawr.

In the 18th century, it was well-known for the manufacture of flannel, stockings, gloves and hosiery. The Tower of Bala (30 ft. / 9m high by 50 ft. / 15m diameter) is a tumulus or "moat-hill", formerly thought to mark the site of a Roman camp. The theological college of the Calvinistic Methodists and the grammar school, which was founded in 1712, are the chief features, together with the statue of the Rev. Thomas Charles[?] (1755-1814), the distinguished theological writer, to whom was largely due the foundation of the British and Foreign Bible Society[?]. Lake Bala[?], the largest in Wales (4 miles / 6.4 km long by a mile / 1.6 km wide), is subject to sudden and dangerous floods, and being deep and clear, is full of pike, perch, trout, eel and gwyniad[?]. The gwyniad (Coregonus lavaretus) is very rare and only found in certain waters, such as Bala Lake, and is fully described by Thomas Pennant[?] in his Zoology (1776).

The lake (Llyn Tegid) is crossed by the River Dee[?], local tradition having it that the waters of the two never mix, like those of Alpheus and the sea.

Bala is also a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, often combined (for example, by the United States Postal Service) with a neighboring suburb, Cynwyd (pronounced "kinwid") in the combined community of Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania[?]. N.B. Cynwyd (pronounced "kunwid") is also a neighbouring community to the Welsh Bala.

In Hinduism, Bala is a minor mother goddess.