How Powys Was Assembled

The county called Powys was created on 1 April 1974. The kingdom called Powys was gone by the thirteenth century, and it was somewhere else.

The kingdom

Early medieval Powys was a northern and eastern kingdom. It reached well into what is now Shropshire and Cheshire, with a heartland around the Severn and Vyrnwy valleys and a royal church at Meifod. Shrewsbury and Oswestry were in it.

Mercia pushed it steadily west and Offa's Dyke marks one stage of that. By the twelfth century Powys had split into Powys Fadog in the north and Powys Wenwynwyn in the south, and it was the latter, ruled from Welshpool, whose princes came to terms with the English crown rather than with Llywelyn ap Gruffudd. That decision cost them Welsh sympathy and preserved their castle, which is why Powis Castle is still standing and still occupied.

Crucially, the old kingdom did not include Brycheiniog in the south or the country between Wye and Severn in the east. Roughly half of the modern county was never in the historic Powys at all.

The shires

The Laws in Wales Acts of 1535 and 1542 abolished the Marcher lordships and drew three counties out of the pieces.

Montgomeryshire, named after a town of a few hundred people, covering the northern part of the old kingdom.

Radnorshire, assembled from the lordships of Rhwng Gwy a Hafren, the country between Wye and Severn, which had never been a kingdom and had no centre. New Radnor was designated county town and never functioned as one; the courts went to Presteigne.

Brecknockshire, which inherited more or less the ground of the kingdom of Brycheiniog, including the long south-western tail down the Swansea Valley that surprises people to this day.

Those three lasted 432 years and are still the categories most people in Powys actually think in. Their Welsh names — Sir Drefaldwyn or Maldwyn, Sir Faesyfed or Maesyfed, Sir Frycheiniog or Brycheiniog — remain in everyday use.

1974

The Local Government Act 1972 reorganised the whole of England and Wales, and in Wales it produced eight counties out of thirteen. Montgomeryshire, Radnorshire and Brecknockshire were merged.

The name was the argument. "Powys" was chosen as a historic name for the new county despite covering ground that the historic Powys never held.

The result is the largest county in Wales by area, around a quarter of the country, with a population smaller than a medium-sized town. Llandrindod Wells became the county town, being roughly central and having the buildings, which meant the administrative centre of the county was also its newest settlement by about eight hundred years.

The three former counties survived as districts until 1996, when Powys became a single unitary authority. Brecknockshire, Radnorshire and Montgomeryshire remain as preserved counties for ceremonial purposes and as the historic counties for everything else.

Why it matters here

Because it is the reason this site organises by region rather than by county.

The administrative boundary of Powys cuts across almost every meaningful pattern in mid Wales. The upper Swansea Valley belongs economically and culturally to industrial south Wales and administratively to Powys. The Tanat valley faces Shropshire. Machynlleth faces Ceredigion and Gwynedd. Presteigne faces Herefordshire.

Powys is a container, and a recent one. It is not a place with a common history, and any account that treats it as one will keep having to explain away the exceptions.