Region
Epynt and Irfon
Epynt ac Irfon
A cleared upland, a string of small spa villages, and the sharpest surviving edge of the Welsh language in the south of the county.
Mynydd Epynt is a broad wet upland between the Usk and the Irfon. It carried hill farms until 1940, when the War Office cleared it and turned it into the Sennybridge Training Area, which it remains.
Below it the Irfon runs west through Llangammarch and Llanwrtyd towards Abergwesyn and the mountain road over to Tregaron.
What to look for
The clearance. Ruined farmsteads across the range, the restored chapel at Y Babell, and the memorial at the Drovers' Arms. Access is only via the Epynt Way permissive route and depends on firing schedules.
Spa villages. Llanwrtyd and Llangammarch both developed round mineral springs in the nineteenth century and both are far smaller than the buildings suggest they once expected to be.
The Abergwesyn pass, a drove road turned mountain road, which is the most direct surviving evidence of how cattle left mid Wales for England.
The language. This is one of the few parts of old Brecknockshire where Welsh held into living memory, and the clearance of Epynt is a substantial part of why it holds less firmly now.
Sources
- Heneb — the Trust for Welsh Archaeology, Historic Landscape Character Assessments covering the Irfon valley and Mynydd Epynt.
- Coflein (RCAHMW), the national monuments record for sites within the region.
- Cadw, Cof Cymru designation records for listed buildings and scheduled monuments.
- British Geological Survey, 1:50,000 mapping and memoirs for mid Wales.
- Brycheiniog, journal of the Brecknock Society, and Ministry of Defence published estate information for the Sennybridge Training Area.