The Companion Guide to Wales

David Barnes

Excerpts from this Guide

From Henllan to Llandyfrïog:
The Teifi has one of its finest stretches in the vicinity of Henllan, where it flows through a deep gorge before passing under the graceful, three-arched bridge built by Edward Ellis in 1789. From 1943 to 1946, Henllan Bridge prisoner of war camp held Italian prisoners captured during the North African campaign. Their chapel, with its fresco of the Last Supper, has survived in one of the huts and has now been restored as a symbol of friendship and reconciliation. The prisoners had arrived by train on a branch line from Pencader that closed to passenger traffic in 1952 and to freight in 1973. In 1986, the Teifi Valley Railway Society reopened a section of the line from Henllan to Llandyfrïog, where, in the well-kept churchyard, lies the grave of the victim of the last fatal duel to be fought in Wales, that between Beynon and Heslop in 1814. Over a drink at the Salutation Inn in Newcastle Emlyn, Beynon had questioned the chastity of the barmaid whereupon Heslop gallantly chose to defend her honour by challenging Beynon to the duel that he subsequently lost. His grave says it all: ‘Alas, poor Heslop.’
Chapter 1, Ceredigion, pp. 26-27

The town of Knighton and one of Britain’s greatest landmarks, Offa’s Dyke:
The county’s Welsh name is Maesyfed, derived from Maes Hyfaidd, the territory of Hyfaidd, a sixth-century Welsh chieftain. Its historic border with England is Offa’s Dyke, that remarkable earthwork – Britain’s longest archaeological monument – constructed by King Offa of Mercia in the eighth century to mark the boundary between such Welsh chieftains and his Saxon kingdom. To this day, a Welsh-speaker going to England crosses Offa’s Dyke to the land of the Saxon, mynd dros Glawdd Offa I wlad y Saeson. Knighton is the largest town on Offa’s Dyke, provided you do not count those at the coastal extremities, and is thus the natural location for the Offa’s Dyke Centre which has a good exhibition, small library and information centre. Knighton is the only town where sections of the Dyke can be seen in the town itself, notably in a designated park where the 293-kilometre Offa’s Dyke Path continues out of the town beside the Teme before cutting north towards the Clun Forest. It is here, to the north of the town that the best-preserved sections of this ninth century boundary, in places up to eight metres high, are to be seen.
Chapter 3, Radnorshire, pp. 60-61

The beauty and sadness of deserted Epynt:
My preferred route to Brecon from Builth is the road over Mynydd Epynt. These high open moors, the haunts of the Welsh cattle drovers, combine magnificence and melancholy in a characteristically Welsh way: magnificence, for their wild scenery and for their population of wild ponies, the word Epynt deriving from the Brythonic form for ‘place of horses’; melancholy, for the memory of the eviction of the Welsh-speaking community that farmed these hills by the Ministry of Defence in 1940 to make way for an army firing range. In the space of just a few months, a community with a heritage reaching back for centuries was obliterated. A Ministry of Defence information board boasts that the requisition of the Epynt has ‘helped to preserve an extraordinary (sic) rich deserted landscape, untouched by modern agriculture’, and that ‘disused military installations are also now of considerable interest’. After a millennium of stewardship by a remarkable farming community, such sentiments are effrontery. It is possible to take your chance when the red flag of the firing range isn’t hoisted, to seek out the site of Capel-y-Babell, once noted for its eisteddfod. The army rebuilt the chapel to use for target practice; a memorial stone was unveiled at this depressing spot by the Fellowship of Reconciliation in 2000.
Chapter 4, Breconshire, pp. 89-90

Carmarthen and Merlin’s prophecy:
Carmarthenshire was the largest in area of the historic Welsh counties and Carmarthen is the county town that has retained that function for longer than any other in Wales, an unbroken record since Edward I created the shire in 1284. Prior to the industrial revolution it was the largest town in Wales. Its county hall, built in 1938 and known locally as The Bastille – since it both resembles the building destroyed in the French Revolution and occupies the site of Nash’s town gaol – is a striking feature of the skyline above the Tywi as the town is approached from the south-east. Regrettably, coracle fishing on the river did not survive the twentieth century, but the town has not been inundated in fulfilment of ancient prophecy: for, of an oak tree in Priory Street, Merlin is said to have foretold:
When this oak shall tumble down
So will fall Carmarthen town.
In 1978, the petrified stump of this oak was removed with some trepidation, from the junction of Priory Street and Old Oak Lane, in a road-widening scheme. The only consequence seems to have been unprecedented growth and prosperity for the town, although it may still be premature to discount Merlin’s prophecy. The stump of Merlin’s oak can now be inspected at St Peter’s Church House in Nott Square, the latter named after General Nott, a hero of the Afghan Wars, whose statue was designed by Edward Davis.
Chapter 9, Carmarthenshire, pp. 196-197

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