Work has yet to start on the characterisation of this Historic Landscape area.
The following description, taken from the Historic Landscapes Register, identifies the essential historic landscape themes.
The section of the Usk valley identified here lies to the east
and west of Brecon in southern Powys; an area confined on
the south by eastern flanks of the Brecon Beacons range and
on the north by the southern foothills of Mynydd Epynt.
To the east, the western end of the Black Mountains scarp
overlooks the shallow basin containing Llangorse Lake
which has been included in the area. The Usk valley forms
a distinctive and easily accessible corridor across the area,
with its wide, flat floor rising gently from 120m above OD
at Llansantffraed in the east to 150m above OD at Aberbrân
in the west. On either side of the valley, the slopes rise to a
gently rolling and dissected landscape of low hills, ridges and
shallow valleys between 150m and 300m above OD.
The visual impression of the whole area is dominated by
small hedged fields enclosing the rich agricultural land of the
valley bottom, and it is in many ways a typical Mid Wales
vista. This rich pattern of land use is a product of its complex
farming and settlement history, from early Neolithic farmers,
through Roman and Norman ‘invaders’, via the Celtic saints,
to the remains of medieval and later agriculture and commerce.
Each period of land use has moulded the landscape
and each in turn has been overlain and partly obscured by
its successors. Almost in contradiction to this continuity,
the Middle Usk Valley is also a classic example of a Welsh
landscape of domination, conquest and political change, and
many of the archaeological and historic elements visible today
result from man’s imposition of his control on the landscape,
not only in the Roman and medieval and later periods, but
also in the prehistoric period.
The earlier prehistoric remains are typified by the
Neolithic chambered long barrow of Tyˆ Illtud, lying in the
east of the area between Brecon and Llangorse Lake. This
5000-year-old megalithic tomb comprises a series of drystonebuilt
chambers once covered by a long earthen mound. The
site is one of a group of such barrows in the Brecon Beacons
and the Black Mountains. Although relatively few remains of
this remote period survive in this, or in any other, landscape
in Wales, these communal burial mounds provide an intriguing
glimpse into the life and death of the Neolithic farmers
who occupied the Middle Usk Valley. Local tradition says that
the empty chambers of Tyˆ Illtud were later used as a hermitage
by St Illtud in the 6th century, at which time a number
of crosses and other Christian symbols were carved into its
walls.
The later prehistory of the Bronze Age is represented
by a number of round barrows and burial cairns which occupy
the higher ground overlooking the rich valley floor
of the Usk, which in turn plays host to a number of enigmatic
standing stones.
To the west of Brecon lie the impressive remains of
Brecon Gaer, the finest surviving example of a Roman fort in
Powys. Built within sight of the native Iron Age settlements at
Coed Fenni-fach and Pen-y-crug, it guards the Roman road
as it descends from Fforest Fawr to cross the Usk and
march north into Mid Wales. To the east of Brecon lie the
remains
of Powys’s only Roman villa, where excavations in the 18th
century revealed an outstanding mosaic-floored bath-house.
The extent of Roman settlement in the area is unknown, but
there is little doubt that the Romans quickly assimilated and
exploited the existing pattern of settlement and land use that
they would have found surrounding the major Iron Age hillforts
at Allt yr Esgair, Slwch Tump, Pen-y-crug and Coed
Fenni-fach.
Also to the east of Brecon lies Llangorse Lake, which has
an important place in Welsh history and mythology. The
small man-made island, or crannog, was constructed as a fortified
palace by Brychan, king of Brycheiniog, during the late
9th century and destroyed, according to the Anglo-Saxon
Chronicles, in AD 916. A local legend recounts how the
lake covers the remains of a city ruled by a cruel and greedy
princess who agreed to marry a poor suitor only if he brought
her great wealth. The man murdered a rich merchant to gain
the princess’s hand, but in revenge, the merchant’s ghost
raised a terrible storm which drowned the kingdom. It is not
known when the legend originated, but it predates the first
archaeological excavation of the crannog in 1850 and is an
interesting and perceptive folk memory. More plausibly, as
a major royal and ecclesiastical centre in Brycheiniog, the
crannog could have a claim to have been the locus scribendi
of the early Welsh stanzas, Canu Llywarch Hen, written quite
probably between the 8th and mid-10th centuries, when
Llangorse and the Brycheiniog dynasty were in their heyday.
The remains of this artificial island were fully revealed by
excavation during the early 1990s. Llangorse is the only
crannog known in Wales, although it is a form common
in Ireland; this possible Irish connection is also perhaps evidenced
by the large number of Ogam inscriptions in
local churches. The lakeside villages of Llangorse and
Llangasty-Talyllyn both have probable early Celtic
monastic foundations.
Conquest and settlement from the medieval period are
also represented here and history and tradition suggest that
the decisive battle between the Welsh forces of Bleddin ap
Maenarch and the invading Norman army of Bernard de
Neufmarché was fought near Battle in 1092. Norman victory
led to the subjugation of the native population and the rise of
Brecon town. The earliest castle at Brecon was a motte and
bailey, later replaced by a masonry castle. The town also
boasts the remains of a Benedictine priory, originally founded
in 1100, which, despite its extensive renovation between 1862
and 1874 by the great Victorian architect, Sir Gilbert Scott,
still retains many interesting features, such as rare Early
English lancet windows and 16th-century conventual buildings.
In 1923, the priory, which by then had become Brecon’s
parish church, was chosen as the cathedral of the newly
formed Diocese of Swansea and Brecon, one of the two new
dioceses founded by the new Church in Wales, following its
separation from the Church of England. The town also contains
a Dominican friary, originally founded in the 13th century,
which, although now a school and much altered, is
claimed to be the largest single group of Dominican buildings
surviving in Britain.
The presence of the castle and these two important ecclesiastical buildings
formed the basis of a flourishing
medieval town and by the 13th century, the settlement
had spread to occupy the lower ground alongside the River
Usk, now spanned by a fine stone bridge of 1563, and had
been provided with stone defences. Although some of this
medieval fabric survives in places, today Brecon’s architecture
is characterized by fine brick and stone town houses of the
18th and 19th centuries. Indeed, a population of 5026 placed
it as the ninth largest town in Wales at the end of this period.
Much of this later architecture survives unaltered and unspoilt
by modern development, and combined with its medieval
roots this contrives a particularly pleasing and valuable asset,
and one that is becoming increasingly rare in other towns in
Wales. Today, Brecon is internationally known for its annual
Jazz Festival.
Brecon, like its Roman predecessor, was built to maintain
the Usk valley as a strategic route into West Wales, and like
the Gaer, it is watched over by native settlements of an earlier
period, such as Llanspyddid and Llanfrynach, ranged around
the rim of the valley. One of these early Welsh settlements,
Llanddew, gained fame in the medieval period as the site of
the palace of the Bishops of Brecon. This modest castle was
occupied between 1175 and 1203 by Gerald of Wales who, as
Archdeacon of Brecon, described it as being ‘well adapted to
literary pursuits and the contemplation of eternity’ and started
his famous tour of Wales from here in the late 12th century.
The village displays an impressive set of medieval earthworks
indicating its former size and importance.
The Middle Usk Valley is particularly notable for its
medieval castles, containing as it does fine examples of
the early motte and baileys of the Norman marcher lords,
such as those at Aberyscir, Alexanderstone and Treberfydd,
stone castles such as at Pencelli, and a fine later medieval
defended tower house at Scethrog. Much of the valley retains
a medieval character associated with these strongholds, typified
by small shrunken villages surrounded by hedged pasture.
A particularly impressive example of the former wealth and
importance of this area during the medieval
period is that of Llanfihangel Talyllyn. Here the former
extents of the medieval village are clearly visible, with earthworks
indicating former streets and building platforms which
once made up almost one quarter of the village. The area is
also notable for its large country houses of the 18th and 19th
centuries, such as Peterstone Court, and their associated
estates, which have built on the landscape of their medieval
and early post-medieval predecessors such as Tyˆ Mawr at
Llangasty-Talyllyn.
The advent of the Brecon and Monmouthshire Canal
(begun in 1799, first opened in 1801 and then joined to the
Monmouth Canal in 1812), which winds its way along the
southern fringes of the area, connected the valley to the
vibrant industrial economies of South Wales. The resulting
wharfs and store houses at the canal terminus in Brecon
became an important area for agricultural trading and the
cloth industry. In the 1860s the canal was, in its turn, eclipsed
by the Brecon and Merthyr Railway which connected Brecon
to the Great Western Railway at Neath, via Ystradgynlais, in
the south, and later to Hereford, via Hay-on-Wye, in the east.
Ironically this arterial connection has long since disappeared
while the canal, crossed by its characteristic lifting and humpbacked
bridges, now provides an idyllic and popular tourist
route through the margins of the valley.
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