Town in Powys, Wales
Llandrindod Wells
Every August, Llandrindod Wells puts on top hats and bustles for a Victorian festival, in a town that really was built by the Victorian craze for drinking foul-tasting water.
Key information
- County
- Powys
- Nation
- Wales
- Known for
- Victorian spa architecture, its lake and the annual Victorian Festival
About Llandrindod Wells
The town that got rich on smelly water
Llandrindod Wells owes its existence to three kinds of spring water: saline, sulphur and chalybeate, the last of which tastes of iron. Visitors drank pints of the stuff and swore it cured whatever ailed them. For most of its life the place was a tiny settlement around an old hill church. The name Llandrindod simply means church of the Holy Trinity. The "Wells" was bolted on once the spa trade took off, and the locals have long shortened the whole thing to "Llandod".
How a railway built a town in a few decades
The spa trade had already begun in the eighteenth century, but the big change came in 1865, when the railway reached Llandrindod. Suddenly the middle of Wales was within easy reach of the Midlands and the industrial towns, and the Victorians arrived in their thousands for the "season". The town was laid out in a rush to meet them. Wide streets filled with red brick and terracotta, ornate ironwork and big hotels, all built in a short burst of Victorian confidence. That is why the centre looks so unusually uniform for a Welsh town. The railway is still the way in. The Heart of Wales line runs about 120 miles from Swansea to Shrewsbury through some of the emptiest and prettiest country in Britain, and Llandrindod is its busiest stop.
Why everyone dresses up in August
The town has never quite let go of its heyday. Each August the Victorian Festival fills the streets with people in crinolines, frock coats and top hats. There are street entertainers, concerts, talks and tea parties. It works because the setting is real. The Metropole Hotel, the Grand Pavilion and the long terraces were made for exactly this sort of promenading, so the costumes look like they belong.
Lakes, parks and a glen of spa pavilions
The old spa grounds are the best part of a visit. Rock Park is a wooded glen where the pump rooms and pavilions once dispensed the waters, and you can still follow the paths that Victorian invalids took on their prescribed walks. Lake Park has the boating lake, a favourite for generations of families. On the edge of town, Llandrindod Common is open hill country where a golf club, founded in 1905, shares the turf with walkers. For the story behind it all, the Radnorshire Museum covers the spa years alongside much older finds from the area.
Older than the Victorians
Long before the spa, the Romans had a presence here. Castell Collen, a Roman fort just outside town, guarded the routes through the Welsh hills. So the ground has been strategic for nearly two thousand years, and was only briefly fashionable. Today Llandrindod is a market and service town for a big rural area, with Welsh lamb and Welsh Black beef on local menus and a steady stream of walkers, cyclists and railway enthusiasts. The Victorian streets are what bring many of them in.