The Dylife Workings

The mountain road between Llanidloes and Machynlleth runs over open moor at around 400 metres, and for a couple of miles either side of the pub at Dylife the ground is worked over comprehensively.

The water problem

Lead mining needs power to pump, hoist and crush, and before steam that meant water. The problem at Dylife is that the workings are high up, near the watershed, where there is very little catchment above them.

The solution was leats: channels cut along the contour to gather water from a wide area of moor and deliver it, still high, to the wheels. Some run for several kilometres. They are hand-cut, remarkably level, and they are the single most impressive thing on the site.

Follow one. It will take you across open hillside for a long way, holding its height, and then arrive at a wheelpit.

Martha

The mine's largest wheel, generally called Martha, was among the biggest in Wales — a pitchback wheel of great diameter driving pumping rods and crushing machinery.

It is long gone for scrap, as almost all mine machinery is. What remains is the wheelpit, a deep stone-lined slot, and the mountings.

What else to look for

Dressing floors: terraced flat areas near water where ore was crushed, sorted and washed.

Buddle pits: circular stone-lined basins where crushed ore was separated from waste by controlled water flow. They look like shallow round ponds and they are diagnostic.

Reservoirs and ponds on the moor, holding water for dry periods.

Adits: horizontal entrances driven into the hillside, and shafts, some capped and some not.

Spoil, in quantity, colouring the ground.

Ffrwd Fawr, a waterfall on the Twymyn dropping around 40 metres, a short walk from the road and one of the higher falls in mid Wales.

The settlement

Several hundred people lived up here in the middle of the nineteenth century, with chapels, a school, shops and at one point a police station.

When the ore ran out and prices fell, they went — to the south Wales coalfield and abroad. The buildings came down or were robbed for stone, and what is left are footings in the grass.

That sequence is the standard mid-Wales metal mining story, and Dylife shows it more clearly than anywhere else because nothing has been built over it since.

Safety

This matters here more than on most sites.

Shafts are deep, some are uncapped, and vegetation hides them. Adits are unstable, often flooded and can hold bad air. People have died in mid-Wales workings within living memory.

Lead spoil is toxic. Do not handle it, keep children off it, and keep dogs off it and out of the streams draining it.

The site is scheduled. Digging and metal detecting on it are criminal offences.

Visiting

Glyndŵr's Way passes through, which is the best way to arrive. There is parking near the pub.

The mountain road is single track with passing places, exposed, and regularly closed by snow. The view north over the Dyfi towards Cadair Idris from the ridge is among the finest in mid Wales.