Reference resource · Powys, Mid Wales
Every claim on this site says where it came from.
The settlements, historic sites and heritage of Powys, written up properly and sourced. Where the evidence is thin or the accounts disagree, we mark it rather than smooth it over.
Start here
A–Z of places
Look up a settlement by name.
Regions
Powys divided by the ground rather than by administrative boundaries.
Periods
The county in order, from the Neolithic to the closed branch lines.
Sites and structures
Castles, churches, monastic remains, mines, monuments and kilns.
Themes
Water, language, landownership, movement, work and what was removed.
Guides
How to read the ground, use historic maps and research a place yourself.
What this is
Powys Heritage is the published outcome of a Cambria Sports Culture CIC research project into the heritage, history and culture of Powys.
The material already existed, scattered across excavation reports, county society journals going back to the 1860s, listing descriptions, tithe apportionments and archive catalogues. Nearly all of it is free to consult and almost none of it is easy to find. This site pulls it together, organised by place, in plain English, with every claim attributed.
It covers the old counties of Montgomeryshire, Radnorshire and Brecknockshire, joined in 1974. It is free, carries no advertising and is not selling anything.
Why the flags
A worked example
Talgarth is described almost everywhere as the seat of the kings of Brycheiniog. It is not, however, what the evidence shows.
Click the marked text. Every article works the same way, and the flags are counted on this page so you can see how much of what you are reading is solid.
Worth reading first
Town · upper Swansea Valley
Ystradgynlais
The second largest town in Powys, left out of nearly every account of the county. On a February morning in 1837 something happened here that helped industrialise the United States.
Theme · water
The Drowned Valleys
Liverpool took Llanwddyn. Birmingham took the Elan. Both were finished decades before anyone in Wales was in a position to argue about it.
Theme · clearance
Mynydd Epynt, 1940
In 1940 the War Office cleared fifty-four farms off Epynt. Around two hundred people left, and the western edge of Welsh-speaking Breconshire went with them.
Site · early medieval royal residence
Llangorse Crannog
The only crannog in Wales, built for a king of Brycheiniog in the 890s, burned by a Mercian army in 916. The timbers are dated to within four years.
Theme · absence
Silences in the Landscape
The ruins on the open hill are not medieval. They are Victorian and Edwardian, and they are the clearest record this county has of the people who left.
Theme · the earthwork
Offa's Dyke
Eighty miles of bank and ditch, the largest thing built in Britain between the Romans and the Normans, and nobody is certain what it was for.
Recently added
About
Languages
The whole site exists in English and in Welsh. Here is how the two versions relate to each other.
Site · monument
Cilmeri
A rough granite monolith beside the road west of Builth, marking where the last native Prince of Wales was killed on 11 December 1282.
Theme · the county on the page
Writing Powys
Giraldus in 1188, Kilvert in the 1870s, Chatwin in 1982. The outsiders write about the border; the insiders write about the chapel and the hill.
Site · market hall
Llanidloes Market Hall
The last half-timbered market hall left in Wales, standing on open oak arches at the crossroads so that trading could carry on underneath.
Site · standing stones
Maen Llia and the Fforest Fawr Stones
A slab over three metres high standing alone in an empty pass, and a scatter of Bronze Age monuments across the moor around it.
Site · defensible tower
Talgarth Tower
A stone tower standing beside the bridge in the middle of a market town, built when a merchant needed somewhere to retreat to and not much else survives of that idea in Wales.