About

How this is written

What counts as evidence here, what happens when there isn't any, and why some sentences on this site are marked in ochre.

Most local heritage writing has the same problem. It reads confidently, it names no sources, and it repeats things that have been repeated since about 1890 without anyone checking where they started. Some of it is right. There is usually no way to tell which parts.

This site tries to work differently, and the difference is visible on the page.

Every article names its sources

Not a central bibliography. Each article ends with the specific things it drew on: the excavation report, the listing description, the county society journal, the gazetteer. If a claim came from one Victorian topographical dictionary and nothing else, that is stated.

Contested claims are flagged

Where the evidence is thin, or the sources disagree, or a story is tradition rather than record, the sentence carries a marker. Clicking it opens a note explaining what the problem is.

There are four flags:

Tradition, not evidence. Repeated for centuries, never documented. A great deal of Welsh local history is in this category, and it is often the most interesting material on the page. It just isn't the same kind of thing as a dated timber.

One source only. Usually a nineteenth-century gazetteer, uncorroborated. Often correct. Occasionally somebody's guess that hardened into fact through repetition.

Accounts differ. The sources contradict each other and there is no settled answer.

Dating uncertain. A range rather than a year, or a date that is widely published but that we have not been able to trace to a primary source.

The number of flags across the site is counted on the front page. That number going up is a good sign, not a bad one.

What this site will not do

It will not give turn-by-turn directions to sites on private land, and it will not publish precise locations for vulnerable or unscheduled archaeology.

It will not pretend that Powys history is only the picturesque parts. The asylum at Talgarth, the clearance of Mynydd Epynt, the drowning of Llanwddyn, the emptied farms and the closed branch lines are all part of the record. So is the retreat of the Welsh language across most of Radnorshire, which happened and is not improved by being left out.

It will not reproduce content from Cadw, Coflein or the Historic Environment Record wholesale. Designation data is quoted and attributed under the Open Government Licence; the writing around it is original.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, it is worth telling us, and it will be changed with the revision date updated. Local knowledge is a source too, and it is one of the few that no archive holds.