Llanymynech

The England–Wales border runs down the middle of Llanymynech. It goes through the village, along the main street, and famously through a pub, where the bar was once in one country and the lounge in the other.

That mattered when Wales had Sunday closing and England did not, which is the kind of thing borders are for.

The hill

Llanymynech Hill is limestone, standing up abruptly out of the Severn plain, and it has been exploited continuously for a very long time.

There is an Iron Age hillfort on top, one of the largest in the Marches, enclosing around 57 hectares.

Underneath it is Ogof, a cave and mine complex worked for copper. Roman coins and human remains have been found in it, and it is one of the few securely Roman metal mines in Wales. The workings are a Site of Special Scientific Interest for their bat populations and are not accessible.

Then limestone, at industrial scale, from the eighteenth century. The quarry faces are enormous and dominate the village.

The limeworks

The site below the quarry is one of the better preserved limeworks in Britain.

The Hoffmann kiln is the thing to see: a large oval continuous kiln of a type patented in 1858, in which the fire moved round the ring while chambers were loaded and unloaded in sequence, so that burning never stopped. Very few survive anywhere. It has been consolidated and there is public access with interpretation.

Also on the site: draw kilns of the older intermittent type, an incline down from the quarry, tramway formations, and the wharf on the Montgomery Canal that took the lime away.

Together they let you read the whole process from face to boat in about half an hour of walking.

The canal

The Montgomery Canal runs through the village and the restored section here is navigable. The canal was built for lime and coal, and Llanymynech is the clearest place in Powys to see why.

Now

Offa's Dyke Path passes through, running up over the hill. There is a nature reserve on the old quarry ground, managed for limestone grassland and its butterflies and orchids.

The golf course on the hill has holes in both countries, which the club has made a good deal of and which is entirely true.