Project

Bryn-Mawr is some 4 miles from the ancient settlement of Llanerfyl. Prehistoric tombs and Iron Age hill forts are to be found in the surrounding mountains and Roman roads crossed here. The village church is dedicated to St.Erfyl of the 4th century. Within this area can be found the traces of the medieval period when this part of Powys was a frontier with the marcher lords of Welshpool (de la Pole) and the Severn Valley.

Near a crossing point over the river Banwy is the site of Llyssun, a Llys –a native hall or palace. It appears as a motte and bailey castle of modest size close to the river, controlling the crossing point and having its own deer park above it.

It is modeled on the castles of the Norman invaders, a motte, or mound with a raised earth work to form the bailey; although its origin is obscure, an early Norman attempt to conquer the region or a native Welsh attempt to copy the latest in castle design?

Llyssun is introduced to us in the writing of the Cynddelw, the great 12th C. bard, who speaking of his patron and prince (and fellow -poet) Owen Cyveiliog as the “Lion of Llyssyn”, and in another place, as “My chieftain encamped in the dwelling at Llyssyn”.

His uncle built a motte and bailey at Castle Caereinion in 1156. He is known to have been evicted from there by Owain Gwynedd and the Lord Rhys in 1166 after he swore allegiance to the English. Owain Cyveiliog returned and destroyed the castle soon afterwards with a Norman force.

His great grandson Llewelyn de la Pole, lord of Mechain, became possessed of Llyssun in 1290, together with Llanerfyl and Cynewill, and the exclusive rights to hunt deer and wild boar on the “Chase of Cevn Drum”.

It was this Llewelyn-holding all his lands in fee of his brother Owen, lord of Powys-who gave the town of Llanfyllin its first municipal privileges.

In the latter part of the 15th C. the feudal tenant of Llyssun was the poet Ieuan ap bedo Gwyn who belonged either to the Llwydiarth clan or else to Ieuan Caereinions family.

Early in Queen Elizabeth I reign the owners of this estate sold it to Edward Herbert of Montgomery castle. His son Richard married Magdalene Newport a descendant of the De la Pole lords. One of their sons was the poet George Herbert, who spent much of his childhood summers at Llyssun, which the family used as a summerhouse.

Down river from is the site of another Welsh medieval defended hall or palace, that of Neuadd Wen or the “White Hall”. This seat of the Lords of Neuadd Wen can be traced to the early Norman period when the Welsh king’s brother, Meredith ap Cynan chose to take up service under the Prince of Powys.

Further up the valley sits Cann Office, an inn that was founded in 1310, an old earthwork belonging to a twelfth century motte and bailey castle beside it.

To the present day village of Carno the lands where controlled by the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller owned lands to the North around the present lake Vyrnwy where a hospice was established.

The high ground to the south and west of the village, away from the valley bottom was home to a number of monastic farmsteads in the 12th C.

The Cistercian monastery at Strata Marcella, Welshpool who's founding patron was Owen Cyveliog ,owned these highlands and established a number of monastic farms or Granges that are still worked to this day, including Sychtyn and Dolwen where a chapel was built.

Less than a mile to the south west lays the earthworks of a lost Castell.

Between them sits Bryn-Mawr, an ancient farmstead, a home for many many centuries until 1938, and still farmed today.

How will the need for farm diversification and the pressure for open access to the countryside change the pattern of land use in this century and what foot prints will it leave for the curious in centuries to come? Our current land use is part of the continuum of historic landscapes. We must allow them to change with the times without damaging their links with the past. The sense of place and the sense of connection to and through the generations of people who have stood on Bryn-Mawr in the past is the essence of an historic landscape.

The Welsh Assembly Governments Spatial Plan states that 'our future’ depends on the vitality of our communities as attractive places to live and work. We need to ‘reduce inequalities between communities while retaining their character and distinctiveness', this project will develop and promote the concept of Community Landscapes, Heritage and a sense of place. Bryn Mawr was purchased in January 2007 by Tyddyn Bryn Mawr Ltd. a holding company who formulated the initial aims of the Heritage Trust after agreeing to lease a site into community ownership for its long term preservation and survival.

The Bryn-Mawr Heritage Project will seek to instill a sense of place within the people involved and increase awareness of the benefits of understanding their own heritage landscape and environment. To facilitate this Bryn Mawr Heritage Trust is to be established to purchase a long term lease on the site and place the management, conservation and restoration in the hands of the community. The project will be carefully managed by a Board of Trustees meeting monthly to monitor, assess and devise strategic development of this unique site. By giving people an opportunity to explore their own heritage in their own chosen innovative way, people will feel connected with their landscape and heritage.

We aim to achieve this through leading a sustained programme of community based education, excavation, preservation, conservation, and historical restoration.

Encouraging communities to identify, look after and celebrate their heritage is central to this project. This initiative will use the expertise and experience of members, contacts, and partners developed in the Castell Newydd Domen pilot project which began in August 2005. Over 40 volunteers from throughout the U.K. provided in excess of 1000 hours work to build a medieval 3 bay barn and experimental clay bread oven in just 21 days.

This work resulted in a promotional event, a “Medieval Woodlands weekend” over the bank holiday where costumed demonstrators presented a living history display of mid 14th C. building practices, tools, crafts, cooking, baking, arms, armour and archery. With over 100 visits to the site the project attracted many new members and requests for educational visits from local schools.

Current project members range from archaeologists, conservationists, traditional builders, carpenters, educators,” living history” demonstrators, agriculture, timber, forestry specialists, and craft workers. The initial members where drawn from a locally based group of living history demonstrators, educators and re-enactors of the 12th-15th C. who have undertaken public demonstrations for the heritage industry at monuments, museums and history events throughout the U.K.

Many of the steering group have been involved with a late Tudor/Stuart period farm reconstruction in south Wales for over a decade. Here a 15 acre site has been restored and reconstructed to reflect the agricultural practices of the period, farming the field systems, orchards, livestock and managing coppice and woodland. This project has resulted in the BBC Wales documentary “Tales From The Green Valley” that records the farming year as experienced by the participants who had to “put their specialist period knowledge to the test” with early 17th C. materials, methods, tools and practices.

However the project has as a central theme to membership that of open access, taking these experiences away from the sole domain of specialists, academics and television documentaries. This allows interested members of the local community, the region and members nationally to volunteer their time to participate in the activities undertaken by the project, assisting in the construction of the buildings, working and maintaining the land, to be able to “learn by doing”.

It will establish its own Education department to develop a package for use in schools and with associated community groups.

The package will celebrate local history and landscape in a variety of ways such as, visits to local schools, colleges and museums, with a proportion of the work based on intergenerational oral history. Comparing the past with the present. Emphasising the importance of learning from one another will be made possible from opening the project to both schools and the community. Oral history records will be made and archived for use. Reminiscence days will be held at schools where older members of the community will be invited to come along and share their experiences about their area, their youth, and the landscape. Children will develop interviewing and interpretation skills and facilitation techniques.

Three phases of development are planned at the site with the initial surveying, recording and excavation of the original buildings, yard, garden and field boundaries and field systems across the site. A complete survey of plant and tree cover plus species records are to be made, along with a wildlife study and environmental impact assessment. From this a conservation and management plan will be devised and the various activities across the site located.This will be completed by late summer 2008. A range of possible activities include tree planting, woodland management and development, willow beds for bio-mass and craft materials, natural regeneration, habitat protection for wildlife through to the establishment of a medieval deer park .

The second phase of development would include the conservation and restoration of the original Bryn-Mawr as a Tyddyn, our medieval upland farm with its longhouse, agricultural buildings, gardens and outlying field systems, reflecting a working traditional upland farm. Stock will be introduced to the site from period appropriate rare breeds alongside this restoration, restoring it to a working farmstead.

The third long term phase would be the construction of the Castell, a motte and bailey castle set within a moat. Wales has been called the ‘land of castles’ due to the large number of stone monuments that survive. However none are reconstructed to portray an example of what these sites where like during their useful lifetime and little is generally known of the timber and earth castles that preceded them The purpose of the proposed reconstructed motte and bailey is to recreate one of the lost castles of Wales, for before the 13th Century many castles where constructed primarily in earth and timber, some continuing to be occupied until the 15thC.or 16thC. The work carried out excavating and interpreting the site of Hen Domen, Montgomery, was the initial inspiration for this element of the project. The Castell would take the form of a Llys with its cruck framed great hall, smithy, chamber, kitchen, dormitory, kiln-house, barn, stable, dog-kennel and privy.

Bryn-Mawr sits close to Cefn Llys Uchaf-back or support of the highest/uppermost palace or hall and is referred to as its address in past Deeds.
This last phase may also include a visitor’s education and interpretive centre.

With these constructs the project will generate enthusiasm towards historical culture through the provision of a complete interactive learning environment, incorporating national curriculum requirements, with hands on experience, craft work, traditional sustainable agricultural methods, and preservation of rare traditional breeds of livestock, ongoing building maintenance and the general living skills of the people of the middle ages. Therefore the end purpose is to create the atmosphere of an authentic medieval working community, where groups, parties and individuals can participate in and view a range of activities typical of the period.

It is intended to develop the site as a physical base from which to work with visiting students, community groups, the tourist industry and experimental archaeologists.

The projects personnel will be able to participate with these groups in the dissemination of Welsh heritage, history and culture through interactive demonstration and other educational techniques for the benefit of students at all levels, the general public and the tourism sector economy.

Bryn-Mawr presents a rare opportunity to develop and fulfil the aims of the project within an original historic landscape, conserving and restoring a unique part of upland mid-Wales for future generations. Any other conceivable use or development of the site by or for present day farming, residential development, or a change of use will result in it being lost forever.