The Clywedog Valley

Topography and geology have played a considerable role in the land use, settlement and industrial history of the historic landscape area.

Topography and drainage

The historic landscape area extends from the moorland at the foothills of Plynlimon (Pumlumon) in the west at the head of the Clywedog valley, at a height of about 520 metres above sea level, down to the Severn valley at Llanidloes to the south-east at a height of about 160 metres. Towards the headwaters of the Clywedog the valley opens out into a shallow basin a kilometre or more across but lower down towards its confluence with the Severn it formed the dramatic, now flooded, steep-sided, deeply glaciated and serpentine valley, several hundred metres deep and only 150-500 metres wide, which inspired the name Ystradhynod, first recorded in the 1570s as one of the townships which encompasses the valley cutting through the upland plateau, which probably derives from the roots ystrad (‘river valley’) and hynod (‘remarkable’). It is joined from the north and the west by a number of equally steep-sided tributary valleys, notably the Afon Bachog, Afon Lwyd, Afon Biga, Nant Felen, Nant Pen-y-banc, and Afon Gwestyn. To the north-west the Afon Twymyn and its tributaries the Nant y Iâr, Nant Dropyns, and Nant Bryn-moel drain north-eastwards into a deep, 200-metre deep gorge created initially by glaciation and subsequently deepened by river erosion following the capture of what was formerly part of the Severn river system by that of the Dyfi. To the north-east the area is drained by tributaries of the Trannon, including the narrow and steep-sided valley of the Nant Cwmcarreg-ddu, and the broader valley of the Cerist and its steep-sided tributary the Nant Gwden.

The name of the river Clywedog (also applied to several other rivers in Wales) is thought to derive from the clywed (‘to hear’) and thus have the meaning ‘noisy’. Rushing water also explains the origin of the name Dylife which is derived from dylif (‘flood, deluge, torrent’).

Drainage patterns in the Cerist valley were affected by the canalization of the river undertaken in the 1870s when the Van Railway was constructed. Drainage in the Clywedog valley has clearly been profoundly affected by the creation of the Clywedog Reservoir in the 1960s. More locally, patterns of drainage in a number of areas were affected temporarily or permanently as a result of the creation of smaller reservoirs, leats and sluices for the exploitation of water power in support of corn milling, textile production and metal mining particularly during the 18th and 19th centuries and as a consequence of extensive afforestation schemes in th 20th century.

Geology and soils

The solid geology underlying the whole of the area is dominated by slates, shales, grits, sandstones and mudstones of Ordovician and Silurian age. The older Ordovician mudstones and grits underlie some of the central parts of the area, between the Afon Biga in the south-west, Fairdre Fawr in the north-west, Y Fan in the north-east and Cwm Deildre in the south-east. The uppermost beds consist of soft black mudstones which can weather to clay-like deposits, whilst the lower beds consist of hard grits divided by shale beds. The lower part of the overlying Silurian rock consists of black shales which readily weather to an orangey-yellow colour due to the high iron sulphide content together with thin beds of sandstone which are well exposed in the Clywedog valley and around Dylife.

In a subsequent period of earth movement (known as the Caledonian orogeny) t9he Silurian and Ordovician rocks were uplifted and folded and a number of north-south and east-west faults subsequently developed across the area. The east-west faults in particular attracted mineralisation which filled the fault and fracture voids with economically viable lead, zinc and copper ores such as galena, sphalerite and chalcopyrite together with less valuable minerals like quartz, calcite and barite. Two significant east-west faults cross the historic landscape area, one towards the north-west from Dyfngwm at the head of the Clywedog valley to Pen Dylife and then to Dylife itself, the second towards the south-east from Gwestyn and Aberdaunant in the valley of the Nant Gwestyn to Bryntail, Y Fan and Cwmdylluan and beyond in the Nant Gwden valley. The mineral veins vary in thickness from a few centimetres to a maximum at Van of 15 metres in width. The veins are exposed in rock outcrops in places but are typically steeply inclined along dipping fault planes.

In the river valleys the solid geology is masked by fluviglacial drift and later alluvial deposits. A variety of soil types have resulted from the weathering of the solid and drift geology which have historically had a profound impact upon the agricultural potential of the land. The soils on the upland plateaux in the west and south of the area (belonging to the Hafren soil type), on Bryn Moel, Pen Dylife, and Bwlch y Garreg-wen, and on Mynydd y Groes and Bryn Mawr are loamy though often wet upland soils frequently with a peaty surface horizon and thin underlying ironpan, best suited to moorland, rough grazing and conifer woodland. The soils on the hillslopes throughout much of the area (belonging to the Manod type) are well-drained fine loamy or fine silty soils best suited to stock rearing on permanent grassland and woodland. The upper basin of the Clywedog together with the valleys of the Afon Biga, Afon Lwyd, and Afon Bachog, includes soils (belonging to the Wilcocks 2 type) which are seasonally waterlogged loamy upland soils with a peaty surface horizon best suited to stock rearing on wet moorland of moderate grazing value, some permanent, improved grassland, and conifer woodland. The area of the lower Clywedog and lower Gwestyn valleys again has fine silty and clayey soils (belonging to the Cegin series), subject to seasonal waterlogging, best suited to stock rearing and dairying on permanent grassland. Soils on the lower upland to the north of the Clywedog Reservoir, between Fairdre Fawr and Bryn y Fan and the valley of the watershed of the Cerist (belonging to the Brickfield 3 series) are fine loamy soils overlying more clayey soils, again subject to seasonal waterlogging, which have been suited to stock rearing and some dairying on permanent grassland and some cereal cultivation in drier areas.

Environmental history

Some evidence of the environmental history of the area since about 11,000 years ago has been provided by studies of pollen sequences in peat deposits in the Pumlumon (Plynlimon) area. In the earliest, late-glacial phase of the sequence tree pollen is low, but includes alder, pine, birch and hazel, ferns, mosses. A second phase, corresponding to perhaps the Mesolithic and earlier Neolithic periods is dominated by oak woodland, with some elm, pine, alder, birch and hazel, woodland probably, depending upon aspect, initially extending to a height of up to about 600 metres above sea level. A subsequent phase, corresponding with the later Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age periods saw a decline in oak and birch and an expansion of alder and hazel woodland with some blanket peat formation in wetter areas and minor clearance episodes beginning in perhaps the later Neolithic and Bronze Age periods. Later changes in flora and the proportions of tree and grass species and evidence for deforestation and woodland regeneration have been interpreted as reflecting historically attested episodes of land use during the medieval period and the 19th and 20th centuries.

Secular boundaries
The earliest political grouping known in the area is the native tribe known as the Ordovices who inhabited central Wales at the time of the Roman conquest in the 1st century AD.

There is no evidence for the establishment of civil administration during the period of Roman rule between the mid to late 1st century AD and the early 5th century and it is possible that the area continued to be subject to administration by the Roman army throughout this period.

It seems possible that by the early medieval period most of the area had come to form part of the small kingdom or cantref of Arwystli, first recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as the hundred of Arvester, with the north-western part forming part of the commote of Cyfeiliog in the kingdom of Powys.

During the earlier medieval period the small kingdom of Arwystli lay between and became the subject of violent disputes between the two more powerful kingdoms of Gwynedd to the west and Powys to the east. Its early history is obscure though by the late 11th century it was held by the Norman earl, Roger de Montgomery, who had annexed the territory from his power base further east, but returned into the hands of a native dynasty during the first half of the 12th century. Arwystli continued to be hotly contested by the kings of Gwynedd and Powys for a period of about a century and a half during which much slaughter and destruction of buildings is recorded. Though much of the cantref was composed of no more than moorland it included some scarce, fertile valley land, which in the historic landscape area included the valley of the Severn and its tributaries the Cerist and Clywedog. The Severn and the Clywedog valleys were also of some strategic significance in terms of providing a corridor of communication between central Wales and the Marches. During this period allegiances ebbed and flowed between the local dynasty and the house of Gwynedd, the local dynasty and the house of Powys, between the house of Powys and the Crown of England, and even between the competing kingdoms of Gwynedd and Powys, until a period of relative stability following the conquest of Wales by Edward I in the 1280s when it reverted to Gruffudd ap Gwenwynwyn, the then ruler of Powys.

With the exception of the north-west corner which fell within the commote of Cyfeiliog, most of the historic landscape area formed part of the easternmost commote of Arwystli known as Arwystli Uwchcoed (literally ‘Arwystli above the wood’) administered by stewards probably from the early 13th century. By the late 1290s Talgarth in the parish of Trefeglwys, now a farm about a third of kilometre to the north of the historic landscape area, had become the manorial centre of Arwystli Uwchcoed.

Arwystli together with the lordships of Cyfeiliog and Caereinion were regained by the Cherltons, lords of Powys in 1401, during the Glyndwr uprising, from the prominent marcher lord Sir Edmund Mortimer who had formerly seized them. The lordship subsequently passed through the Tiptoft family to the Dudleys who sold the lordships to the Crown during the reign of Henry VIII.

At the Act of Union in 1536 the lordship of Arwystli formed Arwystli Hundred, subsequently renamed Llanidloes Hundred, a part of Montgomeryshire, divided into upper and lower divisions which loosely corresponded to the medieval commotes of Arwystli Uwchcoed and Iscoed. The two divisions were subdivided into manorial townships which had probably originated during early medieval and medieval times and which were to continue to have significance until the mid 19th century. Townships within the area bounded by the historic landscape comprised Penegoes Uwchycoed, Esgeiriaeth, Ystradhynod, Glyntrefnant, Brithdir, Manledd, Dolgwden, Glynhafren Iscoed, and Cilmachallt.

At the present day the historic landscape area falls largely within the communities of Llanbrynmair, Trefeglwys, Llanidloes Without, and Llanidloes. Following local government reorganisation in 1974 these communities fell within the newly-created county of Powys, which became a unitary authority in 1996.

Ecclesiastical boundaries
The area formed part of the 19th-century ecclesiastical parishes of Llanidloes, Trefeglwys, Llanbrynmair and Penegoes within the deanery of Arwystli in the diocese of Bangor.

A single medieval church lay within the historic landscape area, St Idloes Church at Llanidloes. The church is first recorded in the Norwich Taxation of 1254 as capella de Lanidloes but is thought to be of early medieval origin and to be a daughter church of the clas church at Llandinam.

A new ecclesiastical parish was created in 1856 out of the parishes of Llanbrynmair, Darowen, Penegoes and Trefeglwys, focused on St David’s Church, Dylife, which was demolished in 1962.

Although distinct in character from the surrounding area, the origins and development of Llanidloes reflect many of the themes so far discussed.

The date of the earliest settlement is uncertain, though it possibly originated as a church and associated settlement in the early medieval period. The borough, created by the lords of Powys in the second half of the 13th century is first documented in 1263, and as noted earlier has a grid-like street layout characteristic of planted medieval towns with four principal roads focused on the original market cross where the Old Market Hall is now sited. The right to hold weekly markets and twice-yearly fairs was in 1280. A corn mill was in operation by the 1290s. The town grew rapidly during the final decades of the 13th century and the end of the first decade of the 14th century but remained relatively small and of little more than local importance. It is thought to have been provided with defences during the Middle Ages, probably with a number of gateways.

St Idloes’ Church, with some surviving 14th- and 15th-century fabric and possibly the only surviving medieval building in the town, underwent considerable rebuilding in the middle of the 16th century when the hammerbeam roof was built and when substantial parts of the former fabric of the Cistercian abbey at Cwmhir were incorporated within it.

Some evidence survives of a post-medieval tradition of timber-framed construction within the town but was more clearly apparent in the later 18th and earlier 19th century, as evident in the following description from Evans’s Beauties of England and Wales, published in 1812, which also provides a graphic impression of the general sanitary conditions within the town at that time:

‘yet having very few good houses, and, the greater number being built of timber frames, and the intermediate spaces formed with what is technically denominated, wattle and dab, that is, laths, or sticks, intertwined, and the insterstices filled up with mud: add, together with the irregularity of their position, to give an awkwardness to its appearance, not very inviting to the passing visitant. The width of the streets, which in most places is deemed a great advantage, here becomes an abominable nuisance, from the custom the inhabitants have of accumulating their ashes, &c. in large heaps before their respective doors; the exhalations from which in hot weather must be very offensive to persons’
Similar scenes are also evident from Hugh Hughes’ painting, The Llanidloes Pig Fair, set in Great Oak Street, which shows the continuing impact of the market upon the town at about this date. As in the case of other towns in Wales during the earlier 19th century a local health board was established to try and remedy the insantiary conditions.

The use of wooden shingles is the locality is recorded in the following description in Thomas Pennant’s A Tour in Wales, published in 1793:

‘A coarse slate is found in the neighbouring hills; but there still remains, in many parts, the ancient covering of the country, shingles, heart of oak split and cut into form of slates’
The town underwent a period of rapid growth during the later 18th and 19th centuries due particularly to the local woollen industry which during the course of the early 19th century gradually developed from one that was essentially domestic to one based on large industrialized mills. During this period the town also became an important commercial and communications centre and was strongly influenced by the development of the mining industry in its immediate hinterland. By the 18th century, if not earlier, the two main streets meeting at the market hall had become fairly densely built up. The 19th century saw the development of the open land behind the medieval street frontages as well as a considerable amount of rebuilding and the refronting of earlier buildings with brick facades. The rapid gentrification of the town during the first few decades of the 19th century is clear from the following description in Samuel Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary of Wales, published in 1833, which clearly harks back to Evan’s description of the town twenty years earlier:

‘[the town] has of late years been greatly improved by the erection of several more respectable buildings on the site of more ancient houses of timber frame-work and plaster, which formerly prevailed throughout the place, and by the removal of the numerous heaps of cinders which had previously been suffered to accumulate in front of the houses’,
Significant variations in the size of house became evident during the 19th century, typically with substantial three-storeyed houses and purpose-built inns and shops close to the town centre and smaller two-storeyed terraces representing the houses of industrial workers especially in the back streets.

The domestic and commercial area of the town gradually expanded beyond its original medieval limits, with terraces extending along the approach roads to the town and suburban development to the south and east and across the river to the north of the Severn. The outer suburbs fringing the town, particularly those with a more picturesque setting to the north and west, include a significant number of substantial houses or rural ‘villas’ belonging to more wealthy landowners and industrialists, noted approvingly in Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary:

‘On the south-eastern side is a very handsome large house, now in progress of erection, which, when completed and the grounds laid out, will form an ornamental feature in the scenery of the place. A little nearer the town a beautiful house has been lately built, having handsome grounds disposed with great taste, and planted with trees, flowering shrubs, and annuals. Dôl Ll~s, in this parish, commands a delightful view of the Vale of Severn, with the windings of the river and the rich and finely varied scenery on its banks, terminated by the high mountains in the distance’
As a result, there is an exceptionally good sequence of 19th-century domestic and commercial architecture in the town together with some important public buildings and institutions, including the Gaol, the Police Station, Public Rooms built to include a flannel market as well as a court and concert room. The town also became an important regional centre of nonconformism, with chapels of a number of different denominations.

The later 19th-century industrialized woollen mills within the historic landscape area were generally sited to the west and north-west of the town, especially across the Long Bridge and Short Bridge, close to the banks of the Severn and Clywedog to exploit the use of water power, including the Cribynau and Glynne Mills up to 2 kilometres or more further up the Clywedog. The coming of the railway in the late 1850s gave a further boost to the industrial development of Llanidloes. Later industries which developed from this period onwards included the former gas works, railway works and iron foundry, which all being dependent upon access to the railway were sited together with the imposing railway station and other railway buildings and structures including a goods shed, engine shed and turntable, on the northern and eastern sides of the town. Additional housing was required for workers, a significant example being Foundry Terrace, built in about 1860 within yards of the railway works. During the course of the 20th century housing estates expanded, particularly on the south and south-eastern sides of the original core of the town. The town grew in importance as an educational centre and saw the development of primary and secondary school campuses to the south of the town during the 1950s and 1960s on land that had once formed part of the Lower Green common.

The woollen industry came under increasing pressure of competition with mills in northern England from the 1860s. Some mills amalgamated, others were converted to other uses, such as the Spring Mills tannery and leatherworks which took over the premises of a former woollen mill in 1908. The Cambrian Mill was likewise converted to a leatherworks in the 1930s. With the closure and subsequent disappearance of most of the mills and smaller woollen factories, the railway works and iron foundry and the closure of the railway during the course of the 20th century Llanidloes lost many of the former landmarks of its industrial and transport history, though significant remains include the former Bridgend Woollen Mill, recently converted to domestic accommodation, occasional surviving open woollen lofts such as that at Highgate Terrace on Penygreen Road, representing the earlier ‘domestic’ phase of the woollen industry in the town, industrial workers’ housing, such as Foundry Terrace, the Railway Station, and the Public Rooms of 1838, built to include a flannel market as well as a court and concert room. Other public buildings such as the Police Station, and inns, purpose-built shops and nonconformist chapels provide significant visual reminders of Llanidloes’s importance as an administrative and commercial centre.

Although distinct in character from the surrounding area, the origins and development of Llanidloes reflect many of the themes so far discussed.

The date of the earliest settlement is uncertain, though it possibly originated as a church and associated settlement in the early medieval period. The borough, created by the lords of Powys in the second half of the 13th century is first documented in 1263, and as noted earlier has a grid-like street layout characteristic of planted medieval towns with four principal roads focused on the original market cross where the Old Market Hall is now sited. The right to hold weekly markets and twice-yearly fairs was in 1280. A corn mill was in operation by the 1290s. The town grew rapidly during the final decades of the 13th century and the end of the first decade of the 14th century but remained relatively small and of little more than local importance. It is thought to have been provided with defences during the Middle Ages, probably with a number of gateways.

St Idloes’ Church, with some surviving 14th- and 15th-century fabric and possibly the only surviving medieval building in the town, underwent considerable rebuilding in the middle of the 16th century when the hammerbeam roof was built and when substantial parts of the former fabric of the Cistercian abbey at Cwmhir were incorporated within it.

Some evidence survives of a post-medieval tradition of timber-framed construction within the town but was more clearly apparent in the later 18th and earlier 19th century, as evident in the following description from Evans’s Beauties of England and Wales, published in 1812, which also provides a graphic impression of the general sanitary conditions within the town at that time:

‘yet having very few good houses, and, the greater number being built of timber frames, and the intermediate spaces formed with what is technically denominated, wattle and dab, that is, laths, or sticks, intertwined, and the insterstices filled up with mud: add, together with the irregularity of their position, to give an awkwardness to its appearance, not very inviting to the passing visitant. The width of the streets, which in most places is deemed a great advantage, here becomes an abominable nuisance, from the custom the inhabitants have of accumulating their ashes, &c. in large heaps before their respective doors; the exhalations from which in hot weather must be very offensive to persons’
Similar scenes are also evident from Hugh Hughes’ painting, The Llanidloes Pig Fair, set in Great Oak Street, which shows the continuing impact of the market upon the town at about this date. As in the case of other towns in Wales during the earlier 19th century a local health board was established to try and remedy the insantiary conditions.

The use of wooden shingles is the locality is recorded in the following description in Thomas Pennant’s A Tour in Wales, published in 1793:

‘A coarse slate is found in the neighbouring hills; but there still remains, in many parts, the ancient covering of the country, shingles, heart of oak split and cut into form of slates’
The town underwent a period of rapid growth during the later 18th and 19th centuries due particularly to the local woollen industry which during the course of the early 19th century gradually developed from one that was essentially domestic to one based on large industrialized mills. During this period the town also became an important commercial and communications centre and was strongly influenced by the development of the mining industry in its immediate hinterland. By the 18th century, if not earlier, the two main streets meeting at the market hall had become fairly densely built up. The 19th century saw the development of the open land behind the medieval street frontages as well as a considerable amount of rebuilding and the refronting of earlier buildings with brick facades. The rapid gentrification of the town during the first few decades of the 19th century is clear from the following description in Samuel Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary of Wales, published in 1833, which clearly harks back to Evan’s description of the town twenty years earlier:

‘[the town] has of late years been greatly improved by the erection of several more respectable buildings on the site of more ancient houses of timber frame-work and plaster, which formerly prevailed throughout the place, and by the removal of the numerous heaps of cinders which had previously been suffered to accumulate in front of the houses’,
Significant variations in the size of house became evident during the 19th century, typically with substantial three-storeyed houses and purpose-built inns and shops close to the town centre and smaller two-storeyed terraces representing the houses of industrial workers especially in the back streets.

The domestic and commercial area of the town gradually expanded beyond its original medieval limits, with terraces extending along the approach roads to the town and suburban development to the south and east and across the river to the north of the Severn. The outer suburbs fringing the town, particularly those with a more picturesque setting to the north and west, include a significant number of substantial houses or rural ‘villas’ belonging to more wealthy landowners and industrialists, noted approvingly in Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary:

‘On the south-eastern side is a very handsome large house, now in progress of erection, which, when completed and the grounds laid out, will form an ornamental feature in the scenery of the place. A little nearer the town a beautiful house has been lately built, having handsome grounds disposed with great taste, and planted with trees, flowering shrubs, and annuals. Dôl Ll~s, in this parish, commands a delightful view of the Vale of Severn, with the windings of the river and the rich and finely varied scenery on its banks, terminated by the high mountains in the distance’
As a result, there is an exceptionally good sequence of 19th-century domestic and commercial architecture in the town together with some important public buildings and institutions, including the Gaol, the Police Station, Public Rooms built to include a flannel market as well as a court and concert room. The town also became an important regional centre of nonconformism, with chapels of a number of different denominations.

The later 19th-century industrialized woollen mills within the historic landscape area were generally sited to the west and north-west of the town, especially across the Long Bridge and Short Bridge, close to the banks of the Severn and Clywedog to exploit the use of water power, including the Cribynau and Glynne Mills up to 2 kilometres or more further up the Clywedog. The coming of the railway in the late 1850s gave a further boost to the industrial development of Llanidloes. Later industries which developed from this period onwards included the former gas works, railway works and iron foundry, which all being dependent upon access to the railway were sited together with the imposing railway station and other railway buildings and structures including a goods shed, engine shed and turntable, on the northern and eastern sides of the town. Additional housing was required for workers, a significant example being Foundry Terrace, built in about 1860 within yards of the railway works. During the course of the 20th century housing estates expanded, particularly on the south and south-eastern sides of the original core of the town. The town grew in importance as an educational centre and saw the development of primary and secondary school campuses to the south of the town during the 1950s and 1960s on land that had once formed part of the Lower Green common.

The woollen industry came under increasing pressure of competition with mills in northern England from the 1860s. Some mills amalgamated, others were converted to other uses, such as the Spring Mills tannery and leatherworks which took over the premises of a former woollen mill in 1908. The Cambrian Mill was likewise converted to a leatherworks in the 1930s. With the closure and subsequent disappearance of most of the mills and smaller woollen factories, the railway works and iron foundry and the closure of the railway during the course of the 20th century Llanidloes lost many of the former landmarks of its industrial and transport history, though significant remains include the former Bridgend Woollen Mill, recently converted to domestic accommodation, occasional surviving open woollen lofts such as that at Highgate Terrace on Penygreen Road, representing the earlier ‘domestic’ phase of the woollen industry in the town, industrial workers’ housing, such as Foundry Terrace, the Railway Station, and the Public Rooms of 1838, built to include a flannel market as well as a court and concert room. Other public buildings such as the Police Station, and inns, purpose-built shops and nonconformist chapels provide significant visual reminders of Llanidloes’s importance as an administrative and commercial centre.

Llanidloes and the surrounding district became an important centre of the woollen and metal mining industries in mid Wales for a period of about a century between about 1820 to 1920. The impact of these industries upon the landscape has been both transient and muted, and consequently the historic landscape has retained its essentially rural character. Significant remains of these and other processing and manufacturing industries survive as prominent visual landmarks though others have been reabsorbed back into the agricultural landscape.

Corn milling

As noted above, cereal cultivation was probably a relatively small but important component of the agricultural economy of the area from the Middle Ages up until perhaps the early decades of the 20th century and the processing of cereals for both human and local consumption was probably carried out locally throughout this period, making use of water power. Medieval water mills are first recorded in operation at Llanidloes and at Y Fan in the 1290s. Other, probably small mills are recorded here and elsewhere in the 17th and 18th centuries, such as Melin-y-wern on the Cerist at Y Fan, Y Felin Fawr on the Nant Melin (a tributary of the Clywedog) recorded in the 1670s, and Felin-newydd on the upper Clywedog in the 1790s. Some mills, such as Glan Clywedog Mill on the Clywedog just to the west of Llanidloes and Melin-y-wern appear to have been converted to woollen mills between the later 18th and earlier 19th century, though others such as Y Felin Fawr had already gone out of use by the later 19th century. Few visible archaeological remains of early corn milling survive within the area, the exception being Felin-newydd, abandoned some time between the late 1880s and the beginning of the 20th century, where visible remains of leats, millponds and mill stones still survive.

Stone quarrying

Small old stone quarries of later medieval to post-medieval date are to be seen scattered throughout the area, particularly in the area encircling Llanidloes. Though few of these are well dated, many no doubt belong to a distinct phase following the end of local vernacular timber-building traditions in about the middle of the 17th century and the widespread adoption of brick in the earlier 19th century when local stone was in widespread use for the construction of domestic buildings and farm outbuildings. Some quarries were evidently in use throughout the 19th century, however, for building material for mine buildings and also for field walls in some areas.

The woollen industry

From about the middle of the 16th century Montgomeryshire became one of the most important centres of the woven textile industry in Wales. Until the last decade or so of the 18th century it remained an essentially domestic industry, sheep wool being carded, spun and woven into cloth, particularly flannel, in perhaps a majority of farmhouses and cottages, especially during the winter months, and either sold at local markets or to wool traders.

From the end of the 18th century the industry became focused on the Montgomeryshire towns of Welshpool, Newtown and Llanidloes along the Severn, gradually transforming from a cottage-based industry to one that became increasingly industrialised and based upon large woollen mills which harnessed the power of the local rivers. A wide range of skilled workers were employed directly or indirectly by the industry including flannel drapers, wool carders, spinners, and fullers, fulling being the process of thickening and cleaning material which was locally accomplished by pounding the cloth in water-driven mills.

In the early years of the industry weaving was often carried out on hand looms in the homes of the workers and later on increasingly in open workshops on the upper floors of buildings, often with large windows to improve lighting, with living accommodation below. By the 1830s it has been estimated that there were numerous weaving workshops in the town, which together with other allied businesses employed upwards of 2,500 people. Llanidloes established its own flannel market in 1838, obviating the need to trade at the Newtown and Welshpool flannel markets. Poor working conditions and periodic depression in the industry, however, gave rise the Chartist riots in Llanidloes in 1839 which resulted in the imprisonment and in three instances the transportation of those held guilty of fomenting the disturbances, though the town continued to gain in prosperity largely because of the woollen industry.

The later, larger and more industrialized mills such as the Short Bridge Street Flannel Mill, Llanidloes Flannel Mill, Glan Clywedog Mill, Phoenix Mill and the Cambrian Mill, combined all the manufacturing processes under one roof, producing products such as flannels, tweeds and shawls. By the 1850s there were 9 such factories employing about 800 workers. The industry was still largely dependent upon water power and mills were mostly sited on the banks of the Severn and on the lower Clywedog west of Llanidloes, though with the coming of the railways and consequently the greater availability of coal from the late 1850s steam power became more economical and was introduced into several of the local mills, as at Spring Mill built in the 1870s.

The finished flannels were stretched out to dry on tenters close to the mills, which in the case of the Glynne Factory west of Llanidloes, as shown on contemporary maps and photographs, took the form of a wooden frames laid out along a series of six parallel tracks a furlong (220 yards) in length on the steeply sloping northern banks of the Clywedog.

By the 1860s the local woollen industry was already feeling the effects of competition from the mill towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire. By 1912-13 the woollen industry in the area finally came to an end. Some of the woollen mills were converted to other uses, such as Spring Mills which became a leatherworks, though many other mills failed to find alternative uses and have since been demolished. The surviving legacy is largely architectural, though there are now relatively few visual clues of the the importance of Llanidloes in the history of the woollen industry in mid Wales. The earlier domestic phases of the industry are represented at Highgate Terrace on Penygreen Road, where an open weaving loft survives. One of the surviving mills is the former Bridgend Mill near the Short Bridge across the Severn, the last of the Llanidloes mills to close.

Metal mining

An ancient iron bloomery site, possibly of medieval date, is known near the Nant Gwden stream to the south of Cwmbernant Farm. An iron mine is recorded in operation in the 1290s in the commote of Arwystli Uwchcoed, though its location is unknown. Small-scale industry was probably based on local deposits of sedimentary bog iron which were widely exploited in upland areas of Britain for the production of iron, probably in this instance deriving from the precipitation of iron from the local Silurian black shales which are rich in iron sulphide.

Mining for the production of lead as well as copper and zinc ores was a major industry, relict mining landscapes being a notable feature of parts of the Dylife, Hafren Forest, Banc y Groes, and Manledd historic landscape character areas. The remains illustrate a significant progression in both mining and processing technology from perhaps Roman and medieval times up to the early decades of the 20th century when the industry finally came to an end. Other minerals that were extracted included barytes, used as an inert and non-toxic filler for papers and paints, and calamine, use in the production of brass and skin lotions.

The mines are scattered and generally small but the area contains the largest single lead mine site in mid Wales, at Y Fan. The geographic distribution of mining remains in the area closely matches a number of rich mineral veins, giving rise to linear patterns of workings striking across the landscape with little or no regard for the local topography. One such band of workings runs across the open mountain for a kilometre and a half between Dyfngwm in the Clywedog valley to Dylife in the Twymyn valley. Another is the line of workings which extends for over seven kilometres from Gwestyn in the valley of the Nant Gwestyn to Cwmdylluan in the valley of the Nant Gwden via the mines at Bryntail, Penyclun and Van.

Some earlier workings are documented from about the mid 17th century when various leases were issued, though it seems likely that the industry had its origins in the Roman and medieval periods, though in many cases it is likely that early workings have been obscured by those that were extensively reworked at later periods. There is no explicit evidence of prehistoric mining activity in the area but Roman workings have been suggested by the presence of the Roman fortlet at Penycrocbren on Pen Dylife, which it has been suggested may have played a role in policing the local mining industry during the Roman period. There is likewise little certain evidence for mining during the medieval period, though it has been considered significant that a confirmation of the grant of the upland grange at Cwmbiga to the Cistercian abbey at Cwmhir in the 1198 contains the unusual phrase specifying that the grant applies to ‘all its uses and usages, above and below the same land’ (super eandem terram et subter) as well as the more usual rights to woodland, pasture and fishing, implying at least some knowledge of the local mineral wealth.

Mining technology remained little changed from Roman times until about the 17th century, and is generally characterized by numerous relatively small mining ventures, often of a seasonal nature, with relatively shallow workings due to flooding and the power needed to haul mined ore to the surface. Potentially early workings have been suggested in a number of areas, notably at Dylife, Pen Dylife, Dyfngwm and Gwestyn, on the basis of discarded stone mortars at Dyfngwm, narrow opencast workings known as open-cuts identified at Dylife, and by shallow shaft and mound workings of the kind visible on Pen Dylife and at Gwestyn. The possible use of hushing at Pen Dylife, a process involving the artificial channels dug on sloping ground to channel water collected in reservoirs to expose mineral veins in the underlying bedrock, may also indicate early workings.

Surface exposures of mineral veins would have been the first to be exploited and are likely to have become exhausted early on. The steeply dipping nature of the mineral veins in the area required the adoption of deeper and more sophisticated mining techniques locally, including the use of crosscuts (levels from a shaft to intersect with a mineral vein) and stopes (chambers dug above or below a level or crosscut to exploit a vein). One of the few mechanical innovations to be introduced before the Industrial Revolution was the use of the horse whim to raise and lower buckets in the shaft, sometimes recognisable as flat circular areas sometimes with an outer kerb, of which good examples of post-medieval date are known at Pen Dylife.

Further rapid advances in mining technology were made during the course of the 18th and 19th centuries, a period of considerable capital investment by individual speculators and mining companies. For a period in the 1870s the Van Mine was the world’s largest producer of lead ore, employing many hundreds of workers above and below ground. The harnessing of water power and the subsequent introduction of steam engines enabled mines to be dug to greater and greater depths by facilitating drainage and allowing ore to be hauled up from greater depths below ground. From the mid 18th century explosives became more commonly used and considerable improvements were also made to ore processing with the introduction of mechanisation, again by the exploiting water and steam power. Steam was more reliable but was costly to install and run given the distance from the coalfields, though it became more affordable with the coming of the railways. Water, by contrast, was readily available and relatively cheap to exploit and though unreliable during periods of drought it remained an important source of power until the decline of the mining industry in the area.

A vast range of distinct field monument types survive from this industrial period of activity. Mining setts may extend over many hectares and provide a detailed physical record of the extraction and processing techniques that were used. Deep shafts and adits were dug below ground and often connected by crosscuts, for removing ore, for drainage or for ventilation. Reservoirs and leat systems were constructed at various mine setts, including those at Dylife, Pen Dylife, Dyfngwm, Glyn, Gwestyn and Van to collect and distribute water to drive waterwheels used for winding, pumping and ore processing or in some instances to feed steam engines. Engine houses with attached boiler houses and chimneys were built, of which visible remains of one kind or another can be identified at the Pen Dylife, Penyclun, Aberdaunant, Glyn, Van, East Van, and Gwestyn mines. Tramways, tramway embankments, ore slides and inclines for transporting ore to processing areas survive at Dylife, Dyfngwm, Bryntail and Van. Different stages of processing and concentration of ores are well represented at a number of sites, including the remains of ore bins, crusher houses and associated wheelpits, platforms for jiggers, buddles, slime pits and waste tips at various of the mine sites. Early stamps mills are suspected at Dylife where hollowed mortar stones have been found at Esgairgaled. Investment was also made in the construction of various buildings including mine offices, stables, smithies and explosives magazines, of which there is surviving evidence at a number of mines, including Gwestyn, Bryntail, Aberdaunant and East Van.

Due largely to the shortage of local fuel, smelting was mostly carried out at distant smelteries. Concentrations of slag associated with Roman finds suggest that smelting was being undertaken at Caersws and Trefeglwys. During the 17th to mid 19th centuries processed ores were mostly taken westwards by horse-cart 20 kilometres or more over the hills by road to be loaded onto ships at Derwenlas on the estuary of the river Dyfi, to be carried by sea to smelteries at Bristol, Swansea, the Dee estuary and latterly to furnaces established in the Aberystwyth area. Some local smelteries were established, as for example at Penyclun in the 1850s, though it uncertain how successful this were. From the late 1850s ores from the eastern mines were carried to the railhead at Llanidloes, and from the early 1870 by means of the Van Railway. From 1862 ores from the western mines at Dylife and Dyfngwm were more economically carried northwards down the Twymyn valley to Llanbrynmair, to be put in wagons on the Newtown-Machynlleth railway.

Between 1870-78 the mines in the Dylife and Van area were producing many thousands of tons of processed lead ore each per year, but by the end of the 1870s lead production as in other parts of Wales fell dramatically, due to competition from elsewhere, resulting in the closure of many mines. Production in the area dropped to a fraction of its former level and the industry finally drew to a close locally in the 1920s and 1930s. With the introduction of more sophisticated processing equipment it sometimes become profitable to rework earlier spoil heaps for the recovery of metal ores, a process carried out at Dylife for example. The expansion of the paint and paper industries also made it worthwhile recovering barytes, as undertaken at Bryntail and at Penyclun, for example, in the 1930s.

Considerable quantities of sediments were carried downstream as a result of mining operations in the Clywedog valley area during the 18th and 19th centuries. Studies of floodplain sediments in the Severn valley at least as far downstream as Welshpool have shown that the metal content resulting from mining upstream can be used to establish the age of alluvial deposits during the historic period and assess rates of floodplain sedimentation.

Since the middle of the second half of the 20th century there has been a growing awareness not only of the significance of the metal mining remains in the industrial and social history of mid Wales but also the contamination caused by the waste heaps and tailings in some areas which have raised heavy metal levels in adjacent farmland and rivers, notably the Cerist and the Twymyn. This has resulted in some conflict of interests between the requirements of archaeological conservation on the one hand and pollution control on the other. Reclamation of derelict land and the making safe of extraction and processing remains have also been considerations. Nonetheless, in some cases, particularly early on, there has been the perception that important archaeological were destroyed without record.

The 18th and 19th-century mining settlements at Van and Dylife

Because of the often unpredictable and seasonal nature of early mining ventures in the mid Wales orefields, underground working, ore processing and the transporting of ores to distant smelteries were seen as occupations to be combined with agricultural work or work in other industries such as the woollen industry. It is clear from 19th-century census records for the area around the Van mine, for example, that miners either travelled to work from Llanidloes on a daily basis or were accommodated in farms in the surrounding area. Consequently early on there was little incentive for the creation of mining settlements. It was only during the later phases of the industry, during the 1870s and 1880s that some worker’s housing was provided. Van Terrace, a single row of about 18 simple two-storey dwellings, was built during period near the processing works and alongside the railway, forming the core of a small workers’ settlement which also included the mine manager’s and engineer’s houses, a shop, smithy, and Calvinistic Methodist and Wesleyan Methodist chapels. The bulk of the workforce, however, continued to be drawn from local farms and cottages, from Caersws and other stops along the Van Railway, and from Llanidloes.

A similar dispersed mining community at Dylife included the less formal row of about 20 miners’ cottages at Rhanc-y-mynydd (‘Mountain Rank’), each originally with their own small vegetable allotments on the northern bank of the Twymyn river. A shorter row of cottages at Bryn-goleu and a scatter of other houses or short rows were probably also related to the mining industry, all bleakly perched on the edge of the moorland. At one time the settlement also included Independent, Baptist and Calvinistic Methodist chapels, St David’s Church and vicarage, and school, which were all in existence by the 1850s, as well as a smithy and several inns. As in the case of Van, the bulk of the workforce continued to travel to the mine daily from more scattered farms and cottages. The collapse of the mining industry led to the gradual demise of the settlement, charted by the closure of the school in 1925, the disrepair of St David’s Church early in the 20th century and its eventual demolition of the church in 1962, and the recent conversion of two of the chapels to houses.

Elsewhere, there is some evidence for an industrial settlement pattern, with a surviving miner’s smallholding near Bryntail, and the remains of other small cottages in the area.

Roadside settlement at Staylittle

A dispersed settlement at Staylittle (Penffordd-Lâs) had emerged by at least the later 17th to early 18th century by virtue of its position beyond the deep gorge of the Clywedog, on ancient routeways roughly midway between Llanidloes, Machynlleth and Llanbrynmair, and close to the watershed between the Severn and Dyfi river systems. Its development was no doubt fostered by the fact that it occupied a kind of no-man’s-land on the edge of unenclosed common land close to the boundary between the ancient territorial division between Cydewain and Arwystli and parishes of Trefeglwys and Penegoes. In the early 18th-century the farm at Esgair-goch became an important focus of Quakerism in Montgomeryshire, with a Meeting House to which a burial ground, the Quakers’ Garden, was attached. By the early 19th century, as noted above, it lay on the turnpike road between Llanidloes and Machynlleth, which fostered the establishment of the former smithy and the roadside inn, the Stay-a-little. During the 19th century it became a significant rural centre of nonconformist worship for the local farming and mining communities. The Baptist Chapel, first built in 1805, was rebuilt in 1859. The Methodist chapel, formerly at Rock Villa, was established in 1806, and rebuilt in 1875. A new school was built which opened in the 1874. Rural depopulation resulting from the collapse of the mining industry and farm amalgamations during the 20th century led to the abandonment of farms, cottages and chapels, some of which have been renovated as second homes.

Throughout history the valleys of the river Severn valley and its tributaries the Clywedog and Trannon formed important communications corridors giving access to central and west Wales from the borderland and English Midlands to the east.

Roman roads

The Roman fortlet at Penycrocbren on the hills near the head of the Clywedog valley, south of Dylife, lies midway between the Roman forts at Caersws in the Severn valley to the east and Pennal in the Dyfi valley to the west and is approached by a Roman road which is thought to run across the northern side of the area from the Trannon valley via Gwartew, Staylittle and Pen Dylife. The fortlet and road, which appear to have been in use during at least the earlier 2nd century, were probably of military significance but, as noted above, may have played a role in the administration of the lead mining industry during the Roman period. No certain traces of this road have been identified within the historic landscape area, however, and though its course is therefore very largely conjectural it probably largely underlies later tracks and roads.

Medieval to early post-medieval roads, drovers’ roads and miners’ tracks

It is assumed that much of the present-day network of local and long-distance footpaths, lanes and roads was already in existence by the early post-medieval period. Most of these would not have been surfaced in any way, however, and were in a notoriously poor condition before the improvements that were introduced from the second half of the 18th century. By the Middle Ages Llanidloes lay at the hub of long-distant routes along the Severn valley between settlements of medieval origin at Llandinam to the north-west and Llangurig and Rhayader to the south-west, and across the hills north of the Clywedog valley to the medieval town at Machynlleth. Lesser trackways would have linked outlying farms with upland pastures and seasonal settlements in the hills.

Llanidloes also lay at the confluence of two important drovers’ routes in operation between the later medieval period and the coming of the railways in the later 19th century, taking cattle from west Wales to the market towns along the Welsh borderland, which again ran down the Severn valley from Llangurig and across the hills from Machynlleth.

Until almost the end of the 19th century the numerous metal mines that were opened in the area, largely during the period between the later 17th century and the mid 19th century relied almost exclusively on horse-drawn transport and packhorses for transporting men and equipment to the mines and carting processed ores to the smelteries. A distinctive feature of many of the mining landscapes in both mid and north-east Wales feature are consequently the so-called ‘miners’ tracks’ often in remote locations, linking the various elements of the mine workings, the places where the miners lived, and the routes by which processed ores were transported to distant smelteries. The transport of considerable tonages of ores on unmade-up roads resulted in the braided tracks that are characteristic of some mining sites in the historic landscape area, notably Pen Dylife and Gwestyn.

Turnpike roads and improved bridges

Major improvements were made to the network of major network of roads in the later 18th century following the passing of the Montgomeryshire Turnpike Act of 1769, enacted from the 1790s onwards, which gave powers for the repair and widening of various specified roads and to pay for these works and continuing maintenance by raising tolls by means of turnpike gates.

The improved turnpike roads within the historic landscape area that were improved during the later 18th and early 19th centuries comprised the Newtown to Aberystwyth road through the middle of Llanidloes, and the turnpikes running northwards to Trefeglwys and westwards to Machynlleth, all originally provided with toll gates on the outskirts of Llanidloes. The now demolished toll house to the north of the town lay across the Long Bridge in the fork of the roads leading to Trefeglwys and Machynlleth, which were consequently named Westgate Street and Eastgate Street. The old toll house on the road to Newtown, which originated as a half-timbered cottage, survives on Hafren Street though not in a recognisable form. The Trefeglwys road followed the line taken by the modern minor road (B4569), via Dol-llys Hall, Gellilefrith and Cerist Bridge, which forms much of the eastern boundary of the historic landscape area. The turnpike road to Machynleth took a quite different and more circuitous route to the modern main road, following what is now the unclassified road from Pant-yr-ongle, just west of Llanidloes, via Y Fan and Borfa-newydd, to rejoin the modern main road again just to the east of Dinas. Further west it followed the unclassified road northwards via Gwartew to Staylittle and west of Staylittle followed the bleak, predicted route of the Roman road across Pen Dylife past the Roman fortlet at Penycrocbren, rather than the modern route via Dylife in the Twymyn valley.

Milestones, a characteristic feature of the turnpike road improvements of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, are recorded on each of these roads on early editions of Ordnance Survey maps, though possibly only one of these still survives within the historic landscape area, near Borfa-newydd. Another feature which is typical of this period of road improvement is the presence at regular intervals of small roadside quarries, especially in some of the remoter areas, as for example to the north of Dinas. A further major improvement to the road network in the early 19th century was the repair or replacement to bridges, of which the two bridges crossing the Severn at Llanidloes are notable examples. These two bridges known as the Long Bridge and the Short Bridge were both designed by Thomas Penson, the Montgomeryshire county surveyor. They were originally built in 1826 and 1850 respectively, in the first instance replacing an earlier timber bridge and in the second instance an earlier stone bridge. The impact of these improvements can be gauged by the following comment in Evans’s The Beauties of England and Wales, published in 1812.

‘The entrance to the town over a long wooden bridge, erected in 1741, that crosses the Severn, is by no means calculated, to prepossess the traveller in favour of the place’.

Llanidloes acted as an important staging point along the turnpike roads, where various inns provided refreshment and accommodation for travellers. An additional rural roadside inn formerly existed between 7-8 miles west of Llanidloes at the New Inn near Gwartew, named on Ordnance Survey maps of the 1880s, and the Stay-a-little Inn, recorded in the early 19th century but gone by the later 19th century, which gave its name to Staylittle.

Other buildings and structures directly or incidentally associated with the turnpike roads included former smithies recorded at Staylittle and at Y Fan, and more somberly the site of a former gibbet near the roadside and more or less on the summit of Pen Dylife, about 100 metres to the west of the Roman fortlet at Penycrocbren. Excavations here in the 1938 found the central posthole of a gallows as well as gibbeting irons and a skull, thought to date to about 1700, now in the National History Museum at St Fagans. The gallows (Welsh crocbren) is the origin of the name for the Roman fortlet, which translates as ‘Gibbet Hill’. Folklore associates the gallows with a local blacksmith (‘Sion y Gof’) who is said to have murdered his family and disposed of their bodies down a mineshaft, and subsequently made to forge his own gibbeting irons, now in the National History Museum at St Fagans. Little appears to have been written about the sites of early capital punishment in rural Wales, though there appears to be a tendency, as elsewhere in Britain, for gallows as here to be sited on a hilltop, close to a roadway, and close to the boundary of a particular legal jurisdiction. In this instance the site lies on the boundary between the hundredal courts of Machynlleth and Llanidloes, which followed the former medieval territorial divisions of Cyfeliog and Arwystli.

Access to the canal and railway networks

As noted above, the Montgomeryshire canal had been extended to Newtown by the early 1820s and for almost the next 30 years the road link from Llanidloes to the canal terminus at Newtown became an important means of carrying goods to and from the historic landscape area.

The coming of the railways at the end of the 1850s was to have a considerable impact upon the social and industrial development of Llanidloes and its hinterland. Construction of the railway from Llanidloes to Newtown began in 1855 and after an interruption in 1857 due to shortage of funds was finally completed in 1859, with a single large and impressive railway station within the historic landscape area on the eastern side of Llanidloes. The line ran independently of the rest of the national railway network for several years, carrying passengers and goods for transfer to or from the canal until the completion of first the Oswestry to Welshpool Railway in 1859/1860 and the Welshpool to Newtown line in 1861. The line was built using local labour and capital, the principal contractor being David Davies of Llandinam, in partnership with the railway engineer Thomas Savin of Llwyn-y-maen near Oswestry. The first locomotives, carriages and wagons to run on the line had to be brought to the railhead at Newtown by road on specially-made wagons, with other materials brought by canal. In 1864 the Mid Wales Railway line skirting the eastern side of Llanidloes to Rhayader and on to Builth Road and Three Cocks also opened, which amalgamated with the Cambrian Railway Company.

The Llanidloes Railway Works on the north-east side of the town was amongst the engineering industries that developed in the town during the later 19th and earlier 20th centuries by virtue of the railway. The works specialised in the production of rails and other heavy castings.

The Van mine near Llanidloes, which had become one of the most productive and profitable lead mines in western Europe by the 1870s, was unique in mid-Wales in being provided with its own railway line. In 1871 the standard-gauge Van Railway was built branching from the Newtown to Machynlleth line at Caersws and running westwards along the valley of the Cerist and Trannon rivers, with former halts within the character area near Penisafmanledd and just to the east of Y Fan. The railway possessed an impressive underground railway portal, unique amongst lead mines in the United Kingdom, which has been restored and gated at the mine site. From 1873 the line also carried passengers and after some difficulties was reopened for the carriage of freight by the Cambrian Railways in 1896. The railway was a private venture by Earl Vane who leased the mine to the mining company and was at the same time the chairman of the Cambrian Railway Company. The line finally closed in 1940 but much of the line survives amidst the rural agricultural landscape today where the original embankments, cuttings and track bed can still be traced.

Following the first world war the Cambrian Railway became part of the Great Western Railway (GWR). The Van Railway finally closed in 1940, outliving the closure of the Van lead mines by about 20 years whilst GWR was nationalised along with the rest of the rail network as British Railways in 1948. From the 1950s the railways came under increasing competition with road transport. The Newtown to Llanidloes line was closed to passengers south of Moat Lane Junction near Caersws in 1963, but continued to carry some freight until 1967, having been kept open to transport materials used for the construction of the Clywedog reservoir west of Llanidloes.

The modern road network

Remarkably widespread changes were made to the road network throughout the historic landscape area during the course of the 20th century, in response to various stimuli, notably the dislocation caused by the general demise of the local mining industry from about the 1890s, the creation of Hafren Forest from the late 1930s onwards, and the construction of the Clywedog Reservoir in the 1960s.

North and west of Llanidloes and the Clywedog Reservoir the route of the main road from Llanidloes to Machynlleth was substantially altered to the one it now occupies. The upgrading of former minor lanes and tracks and the construction of some new stretches of road was carried out over the 5-kilometre stretch from Pant-yr-ongle, west of Llanidloes, to the east of Dinas via the new earthwork dam at Bwlch-y-gle, superseding the former turnpike road taking the northern route via Y Fan and Borfa-newydd. Further west a new almost 4-kilometre stretch of road was constructed from just to the west of Dinas to Staylittle via Lluest-y-dduallt, superseding the former turnpike which ran via Gwartew. More dramatically, the course of the turnpike road across Pen Dylife via Rhiw Dyfeity Fawr now taken by Glyndŵr’s Way was abandoned in favour of the more northerly route through Dylife and Esgair-galed that had probably previously been avoided by the main road due to the intensive mining operations in this area up to the second and third decades of the 20th century.

Substantial changes were also made to the course of minor roads to the south and west of the Clywedog Reservoir, involving the construction of an essentially new 14-kilometre road branching from the Llanidloes to Machynlleth road near Dyffryn and running via Bryntail and Llwyn-y-gog to just west of Staylittle.

The Llanidloes bypass, to the east of the town, which had been first proposed in the late 1960s due to traffic congestion in the town was eventually opened in 1991, built in a new cutting which largely followed the course of the dismantled GWR line to Rhayader.

Modern long-distance footpaths and cycling routes

The Glyndŵr’s Way footpath, granted National Trail status in 2000, runs through the area from near Dylife, across Pen Dylife to the Hafren Forest and beyond via Staylittle, Llwyn-y-gog and Cwmbiga. A second National Trail, the Severn Way, also passes through Llanidloes. Two National Cycle Network on-road routes crossing the historic landscape area have also been developed in recent years, Lôn Cambria (route 81) which runs between Rhayader and Newtown via Llanidloes, and Lôn Las Cymru (route 8) which follows the route to the west and south of the Clywedog Reservoir, via Dylife, Staylittle and Llanidloes.

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