A–Z of places

96 settlements. Names in bold have their own article; the rest carry a short entry here and will be written up as material allows.

A

Place	Welsh	Grid	Description
Abbeycwmhir	Abaty Cwm-hir	SO055712	A village of a few dozen houses in a long valley, built round the ruins of an abbey that planned the longest nave in Wales and never finished it.
Aberangell	Aberangell		Dyfi valley village that grew round a slate tramway to the Hendre Ddu quarries.
Aberbechan	Aberbechan		Scattered settlement on the Bechan brook near Newtown, with a mill site.
Abercraf	Abercraf	SN815125	Coal below, limestone above, and the largest showcave complex in Britain up the road. Also one of the most strongly Welsh-speaking villages in Powys.
Aberedw	Aberedw	SO080473	A gorge, two castles and a cave where Llywelyn ap Gruffudd is said to have hidden in the days before he was killed three miles away.
Aberhafesp	Aberhafesp		Church-centred village south-west of Newtown with a timber-framed hall nearby.
Abermule	Aber-miwl	SO163951	On a January morning in 1921 two trains ran into each other head-on outside this village, and the way British railways are signalled was changed as a result.

B

Place	Welsh	Grid	Description
Beguildy	Bugeildy		Dispersed parish in the Teme valley on the Shropshire border, farming country with no real village core.
Berriew	Aberriw	SJ188008	Black-and-white cottages round a church and a bridge, and the clearest example in Powys of what an estate village looks like.
Bettws Cedewain	Betws Cedewain		Small village north of Newtown with a fifteenth-century church tower.
Bleddfa	Bleddfa	SO208684	A church with a tower that was begun and never finished, in a parish that has been shrinking since the fourteenth century.
Brecon	Aberhonddu	SO044287	A Roman fort, a Norman priory that became a cathedral in 1923, and an army that has been here in one form or another for nineteen centuries.
Bronllys	Bronllys	SO141350	A round Norman keep, a church with its tower standing separate from it, and a hospital built in 1920 to treat a disease that was killing Wales faster than anywhere in Britain.
Builth Wells	Llanfair-ym-Muallt	SO043510	The town that Wales has never quite forgiven, and the site of the biggest agricultural show in Europe.
Bwlch	Bwlch		Roadside village at the pass between the Usk valley and Llangorse, on the old Brecon to Abergavenny turnpike.

C

Place	Welsh	Grid	Description
Caersws	Caersŵs	SO032920	A Roman fort, a railway junction and a poet who ran the station. The village name preserves the caer that has been there for nineteen centuries.
Carno	Carno	SN962963	A battle in 1081, a wind farm, and for forty years the head factory of Laura Ashley, whose founder is buried in the churchyard.
Castle Caereinion	Castell Caereinion		Ridge village west of Welshpool with a motte and a station on the preserved Welshpool and Llanfair line.
Cemmaes	Cemaes	SH838043	A Dyfi valley village where, by long tradition, Henry Tudor stopped on his way to Bosworth and asked a poet whether he was going to win.
Churchstoke	Yr Ystog	SO269943	The parish is in Wales and part of it is in Shropshire. Offa's Dyke runs close, and the hill above is an extinct volcano with a nature reserve on it.
Clyro	Cleirwy	SO214437	Francis Kilvert was curate here for seven years and wrote the best account of Victorian rural Wales that exists. Almost everything in his diary is still recognisable.
Crickhowell	Crucywel	SO218184	Named for the Iron Age fort on the hill above it, which is roughly two thousand years older than the town.
Crossgates	Croesffordd		Junction settlement north of Llandrindod, created by roads rather than by farming or church.
Cwmdu	Cwm-du		Small Black Mountains settlement in the Rhiangoll valley, with an early inscribed stone in the church.

D

Place	Welsh	Grid	Description
Defynnog	Defynnog	SN925278	A Roman inscribed stone, an ogham inscription and a churchyard yew that somebody claimed was five thousand years old. Two of those three are beyond argument.
Discoed	Discoed		Scattered Radnorshire hamlet near Offa's Dyke; the churchyard yew is exceptionally old.
Dolau	Dolau		Small village near Llandrindod with a surviving station on the Heart of Wales line.
Dylife	Dylife	SN861941	Several hundred people lived up here. There was a chapel, a school and a police station. Now there is a pub, a few houses and a great deal of evidence.

E

Place	Welsh	Grid	Description
Elan Valley	Cwm Elan	SN928646	A model village built by Birmingham Corporation to house the men who ran its waterworks, in a valley whose original inhabitants had been moved out to make room.
Erwood	Erwyd	SO088435	A drovers' crossing on the Wye where cattle were swum across, and a closed railway station that is now the best craft gallery in the valley.

F

Place	Welsh	Grid	Description
Felindre	Felindre		Small Teme valley settlement in the Radnorshire border hills.
Four Crosses	Y Pedair Croesffordd	SJ267184	Flat lowland where the Vyrnwy meets the Severn, and one of the most completely excavated prehistoric cemeteries in Wales lies under the fields.
Franksbridge	Pont Fadog		Hamlet on the Edw, agricultural, with a chapel and little else.

G

Place	Welsh	Grid	Description
Garth	Garth		Village near Builth on the Heart of Wales line, in open sheep country.
Glasbury	Y Clas-ar-Wy	SO179392	The name records an early monastic community. Two miles up the hill is one of the oldest nonconformist chapels still in use in Wales.
Guilsfield	Cegidfa	SJ218116	A large parish church with one of the best medieval roofs in Wales, and a Bronze Age hoard of over a hundred objects found in a bog nearby.

H

Place	Welsh	Grid	Description
Hay-on-Wye	Y Gelli Gandryll	SO229423	A border town that declared independence in 1977 as a publicity stunt and then turned out to have accidentally solved its own economic problem.
Howey	Hywe		Village just south of Llandrindod, largely residential and modern in character.
Hundred House	Rhiw Hundred		Named for a courthouse rather than a village; a scattering of buildings on the Builth to New Radnor road.

K

Place	Welsh	Grid	Description
Kerry	Ceri	SO145901	In 1176 two bishops raced each other to this church to claim it, and one of them excommunicated the other on the spot. He wrote it up himself.
Knighton	Tref-y-clawdd	SO287724	The only town on Offa's Dyke, and the only one in Britain whose Welsh name is simply a statement of where the border is.
Knucklas	Cnwclas	SO250745	A thirteen-arch railway viaduct with battlements and turrets, built in 1863 to look like a castle, below a hill where an actual castle stood.

L

Place	Welsh	Grid	Description
Llanbadarn Fynydd	Llanbadarn Fynydd		Upland Radnorshire village on the Ithon, church-centred, on the Newtown to Llandrindod road.
Llanbister	Llanbister	SO111733	A church on such a steep site that you go in through the tower, in a parish that once held the largest sheep walk in Radnorshire.
Llanbrynmair	Llanbrynmair	SH898026	A dispersed upland parish that exported its own people. Whole families left here for Ohio, and one minister took a congregation to Tennessee and lost everything.
Llanddewi Ystradenni	Llanddewi Ystradenni		Small Ithon valley settlement with a motte nearby.
Llandinam	Llandinam	SO026885	A sawyer's son from this village built the railways of mid Wales, opened the Rhondda coalfield, and constructed Barry Docks to break the Marquess of Bute.
Llandrindod Wells	Llandrindod	SO060612	The county town of Powys is also its newest town. Before the 1860s there was almost nothing here at all.
Llandrinio	Llandrinio	SJ297170	A Norman church with one of the best chancel arches in Powys, and a stone bridge of 1775 that is among the oldest still standing on the Severn.
Llanfair Caereinion	Llanfair Caereinion	SJ104065	A small market town on the Banw and the western terminus of a two-foot-six-inch railway built to bring sheep down to Welshpool.
Llanfechain	Llanfechain		Vyrnwy valley village with a substantially Norman church and a motte beside it.
Llanfyllin	Llanfyllin	SJ141192	A borough charter of 1293, a rare brick church of 1706, and the most complete surviving workhouse in Wales sitting on the hill above.
Llangammarch Wells	Llangamarch	SN935474	The smallest of the four Wells, selling a barium spring for heart complaints. It also produced a Puritan who was hanged for what he wrote.
Llangattock	Llangatwg	SO211179	A village under a limestone escarpment that was quarried on an industrial scale to feed the ironworks over the hill, with the tramroad inclines still running up the slope.
Llangorse	Llan-gors	SO135276	Beside the largest natural lake in south Wales, which holds the only crannog in Wales and the dated royal seat of the kingdom of Brycheiniog.
Llangunllo	Llangynllo		Dispersed Radnorshire parish on the Heart of Wales line, with the highest station on the route nearby.
Llangurig	Llangurig	SN908797	Four miles from the source of the Wye, at the junction where the road to Aberystwyth leaves the road to the north. Drovers used it for the same reason lorries do.
Llangynidr	Llangynidr	SO152196	A sixteenth-century bridge, a flight of canal locks, and a cave on the mountain above where the Chartists are said to have stored their weapons.
Llangynog	Llangynog	SJ053262	In the 1720s this was one of the richest lead districts in Britain. The village sits under a mountain that has been quarried, mined and blasted for three centuries.
Llanidloes	Llanidloes	SN954846	A half-timbered market hall standing on open arches at the crossroads, and five days in 1839 when the town was held by its own weavers.
Llanigon	Llan-y-gors	SO213398	A village at the foot of the highest road pass in Wales, with one of the earliest Quaker burial grounds in the country on the hill above.
Llanllwchaiarn	Llanllwchaearn		Parish across the Severn from Newtown, historically separate and now effectively a suburb.
Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant	Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant	SJ125260	William Morgan translated the Bible into Welsh in the rectory here. It is arguably the most consequential thing ever done in Powys.
Llansantffraid-ym-Mechain	Llansantffraid-ym-Mechain	SJ221204	Lowland Montgomeryshire at its most comfortable, on the Cain near its junction with the Vyrnwy, with a dedication to an Irish saint.
Llanwddyn	Llanwddyn	SJ019192	The village is under the water. What you see below the dam was built to replace it in the 1880s, when Liverpool took the valley.
Llanwrtyd Wells	Llanwrtyd	SN879467	Frequently called the smallest town in Britain. A sulphur spa in the eighteenth century, and now internationally known for bog snorkelling, which it invented.
Llanymynech	Llanymynech	SJ266209	The border runs down the main street and through a pub. Above the village is a hill quarried for copper by the Romans and for limestone on an industrial scale since.
Llanyre	Llanllŷr-yn-Rhos		Village across the Ithon from Llandrindod, agricultural in character.

M

Place	Welsh	Grid	Description
Machynlleth	Machynlleth	SH745007	Owain Glyndŵr held a parliament here in 1404, which is why a town of two thousand people keeps turning up in national arguments about what Wales is.
Meifod	Meifod	SJ155131	A vast curving churchyard in a lowland valley, the burial place of the princes of Powys, and one of the most important early church sites in Wales.
Montgomery	Trefaldwyn	SO222965	Fewer than 1,300 people, a castle wrecked on parliamentary orders, and a county named after it. Montgomery has been getting quieter for four hundred years.

N

Place	Welsh	Grid	Description
Nantmel	Nantmel		Scattered parish west of Llandrindod, farming country with a church-centred core.
New Radnor	Maesyfed	SO212608	A medieval town laid out on a grid that was never filled. You can walk the streets of a town that did not happen.
Newbridge-on-Wye	Y Bontnewydd-ar-Wy	SO014584	A drovers' crossing that took its name from a bridge, and a country house that has been a university field station since the 1960s.
Newtown	Y Drenewydd	SO109918	Flannel built it, Robert Owen left it, mail order was invented in it, and the government doubled it in the 1970s.
Norton	Norton		Border village near Presteigne, estate-influenced, with a Victorian rebuilt church.

P

Place	Welsh	Grid	Description
Painscastle	Castell-paen	SO167462	A hamlet beside one of the largest castle earthworks in Wales, and the site of a Welsh defeat in 1198 severe enough to be recorded on both sides of the border.
Pant-y-dwr	Pant-y-dŵr		Upland settlement between Rhayader and Llanidloes, scattered and high.
Penybont	Pen-y-bont		Small village at an Ithon crossing east of Llandrindod, with a former coaching inn.
Presteigne	Llanandras	SO313644	A town whose streets are too grand for its size, because they were built for a county. Presteigne got the assizes because somebody was killed at Rhayader.

R

Place	Welsh	Grid	Description
Rhayader	Rhaeadr Gwy	SN969680	Named for a waterfall that was blown up to build a bridge. Later the town watched Birmingham take the valley next door.

S

Place	Welsh	Grid	Description
Sarn	Sarn		Small settlement on the Kerry Ridgeway route in the south-east corner of Montgomeryshire.
Sennybridge	Pont Senni	SN921283	A village that was a livestock market and a bridge until 1940, when the army arrived and never left.
St Harmon	Llanfihangel Cwm-hir Deuddwr	SN988723	Francis Kilvert was vicar here for a year and a half, and left a description of a parish that had already given up most of what it had.
Staylittle	Penffordd-las		Upland village on the road to Machynlleth, near the Dylife lead workings.

T

Place	Welsh	Grid	Description
Talgarth	Talgarth	SO154337	Everyone calls Talgarth the seat of the kings of Brycheiniog. The dated royal site is five miles away, under a lake.
Talybont-on-Usk	Tal-y-bont ar Wysg	SO113226	A canal village with a reservoir above it and a tramroad running up the hillside. Three transport systems from three centuries, all within a mile.
Talyllyn	Tal-y-llyn		Small settlement near Llangorse Lake, formerly a railway junction.
Three Cocks	Aberllynfi		Roadside settlement near the Wye, named for its inn, once a railway junction.
Trefeca	Trefeca	SO143325	A hamlet of a few buildings where Howell Harris established a religious community in 1752 and effectively launched Welsh Methodism as an institution.
Tregynon	Tregynon	SO097988	Beside a country house where two sisters ran one of the finest private presses in Britain and hung Monet and Cézanne on the walls.
Tylwch	Tylwch		Small upland settlement south of Llanidloes on the former Mid-Wales Railway.

W

Place	Welsh	Grid	Description
Welshpool	Y Trallwng	SJ226075	A market town in the flat below Powis Castle, with a canal, a narrow-gauge railway, and the only Welsh castle continuously occupied since the thirteenth century.
Whitton	Whitton		Small Radnorshire village between Presteigne and New Radnor.

Y

Place	Welsh	Grid	Description
Ystradfellte	Ystradfellte	SN930134	Limestone country where four rivers cut gorges through the rock and disappear underground. There is a waterfall you can walk behind.
Ystradgynlais	Ystradgynlais	SN789104	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.