Sennybridge

Sennybridge exists because the Senni joins the Usk here and a road crosses both. For most of its history that was the whole of it: a bridge, an inn, a livestock market and a scatter of houses.

Then in 1940 the War Office cleared Mynydd Epynt, the upland immediately to the north, and put its camp at the bottom of the hill. The village has been an army village ever since.

Before

There is a ruined castle above the village, Castell Du, a thirteenth-century stone tower on a spur over the Usk. Very little survives and it is on private ground.

The parish church is at Defynnog, a mile west, and is considerably more interesting than the village: a Roman inscribed stone reused in the fabric, an ogham inscription, and a churchyard yew claimed as one of the oldest in Britain.

The Defynnog yew has been dated by some as over 5,000 years old.

The livestock market at Sennybridge was, and remains, one of the significant sheep markets in south Wales.

1940

The clearance of Epynt removed around fifty-four holdings and some two hundred people in a single season, and it is dealt with fully on its own page.

What it did to Sennybridge was different. The village did not lose its people; it gained several thousand transient ones. The camp was built, the range was established, and the settlement's whole economic basis changed from agriculture to the military in the space of a year.

That relationship is not simple and it is not resented in the straightforward way outsiders sometimes expect. The camp is the largest employer in the area and has been for eighty years. It is also the reason a Welsh-speaking farming community a mile up the road no longer exists.

Now

The Sennybridge Training Area is one of the largest in Britain and is in year-round use, principally for infantry field training. Live firing takes place most weeks.

The Epynt Way, a permissive bridleway of around forty miles, circles the perimeter and is the only legal access to most of that ground. It depends on the published firing schedule. Red flags mean live firing and are not advisory.

Y Babell, the chapel that served the cleared community, has been restored within the range and is used for occasional services. There is a memorial at the Drovers' Arms.

Brecon is ten miles east. The road west runs up the Usk towards Trecastle and the Roman practice camps on the moor beyond.