About

Sources and archives

Where the material on this site comes from, and how to use the same archives yourself. Nearly all of it is free.

Almost everything on this site is drawn from sources anyone can consult without paying. They are listed here in roughly the order they are useful.

Records of the historic environment

Coflein is the online database of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. Every recorded site has an NPRN. It holds excavation summaries, aerial photographs and archive references.

Cof Cymru is Cadw's register of listed buildings, scheduled monuments and registered parks. The listing descriptions are detailed and are published under the Open Government Licence, which is why this site can quote them with attribution.

Archwilio gives access to the regional Historic Environment Records, which contain a great deal that never reaches the national datasets.

Heneb, the Trust for Welsh Archaeology, publishes Historic Landscape Character Assessments covering most of Powys. They are the single most under-used resource for anyone trying to understand why a place looks the way it does.

Printed and periodical

The three county societies have been publishing since the nineteenth century and their journals are free through Welsh Journals Online: Montgomeryshire Collections for the north, Transactions of the Radnorshire Society for the east, and Brycheiniog for the south.

Welsh Newspapers Online at the National Library holds pre-1919 papers, fully searchable, in both languages.

Samuel Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of Wales (1833, revised 1849) is the standard early gazetteer. It is useful and it is not always right, which is why claims resting on it alone are flagged.

Maps

Places of Wales at the National Library carries the tithe maps and apportionments for the whole country, parcel by parcel, which is the best single route into what a place looked like in the 1840s.

The National Library of Scotland map collection holds georeferenced Ordnance Survey County Series sheets for Wales, comparable side by side with modern mapping.

Local archives

Powys Archives at Llandrindod Wells holds the county's own records: parish, poor law, school, estate and quarter sessions material. Much of it is not catalogued online and there is no substitute for going.

The National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth holds the estate collections, the great bulk of Welsh manuscript material, and the probate records.