County in Wales
Powys
In Powys, sheep outnumber people, a town has a bog-snorkelling championship, and a book-mad town once declared itself an independent kingdom.
Key information
- County
- Powys
- Nation
- Wales
- Population
- about 133,000 (2021 Census)
- Area
- about 5,200 sq km, roughly a quarter of Wales
- Known for
- Elan Valley dams, Hay-on-Wye's books, Pen y Fan, the Royal Welsh Show, red kites
- Famous people
- Robert Owen, Pryce Pryce-Jones, Adelina Patti, Richard Booth
- Football clubs
- Newtown, Caersws, Welshpool Town
About Powys
A quarter of Wales, with hardly anyone in it
Powys is the biggest county in Wales by a long way, covering about a quarter of the country's land. It is also the emptiest, with only about 133,000 people in 2021. Sheep greatly outnumber them. The name is far older than the county. Powys was a medieval Welsh kingdom, stretching from the Dee in the north towards the Wye in the south. The kingdom's name was borrowed for the modern county, and it suits a place of high moorland, long valleys and market towns that still serve the farms around them. Hill farming shapes everything here. Welsh lamb, Welsh Black beef and Welsh mountain ponies all belong to this landscape, and so do the livestock markets that still anchor the local calendar.
The valleys that were drowned to keep Birmingham clean
In the Elan Valley, near Rhayader, a chain of Victorian dams holds back reservoirs built to supply Birmingham with clean water. Edward VII opened them in 1904. The water still runs the 73 miles to the city by gravity alone, with no pumps needed. The cost was high for the valley itself: farms and a handful of homes were lost beneath the water. What remains is one of the most photographed pieces of engineering in Wales, with curving masonry dams that water pours over in wet weather like a vast staircase. Nearby, the red kite has made a spectacular comeback. Gigrin Farm near Rhayader became an official red-kite feeding station in January 1993. It began with only a handful of kites, and its daily feeding sessions now draw hundreds. Mid-Wales is one of the best places in Britain to see them.
The town that crowned a king of books
Hay-on-Wye has more bookshops per head than almost anywhere on Earth. That is largely down to Richard Booth, who opened a second-hand bookshop there in 1961 and began buying up libraries, including entire ones from overseas. On April Fools' Day 1977, Booth declared Hay an independent kingdom and crowned himself king, with his horse as prime minister. It was a joke with a serious point, and a great piece of publicity for a small border town. The books paved the way for the Hay Festival, founded in 1988, which now draws writers, politicians and comedians to the Welsh border every spring.
Mountains, dark skies and a very silly bog
The Brecon Beacons, known in Welsh as Bannau Brycheiniog, rise at the southern edge of Powys. Pen y Fan, at 886 metres, is the highest peak in southern Britain. The area was made an International Dark Sky Reserve in 2013, so the stars are spectacular. Then there is Llanwrtyd Wells, which calls itself Britain's smallest town and has a talent for gloriously odd contests. Its Man versus Horse Marathon has pitted runners against riders over the hills since 1980. The World Bog Snorkelling Championships, in a peat trench, began in 1985, and competitors swim two lengths wearing snorkels and flippers. More conventionally, Builth Wells hosts the Royal Welsh Show at Llanelwedd each July. It is the great gathering of Welsh farming, with cattle, sheep, sheepdogs and tractors by the thousand.
Rebel parliaments, castles and a Victorian shopping pioneer
At Machynlleth, Owain Glyndŵr held a parliament in 1404 as the self-proclaimed Prince of Wales. The town still calls itself Wales's ancient capital. A few miles away, the Centre for Alternative Technology has been experimenting with greener living since 1973. Welshpool's Powis Castle is a red-stone fortress that became a stately home, with terraced gardens famous for their huge clipped yews. Knighton sits on the Offa's Dyke Path, which follows the great eighth-century earthwork along the border. Newtown produced two remarkable figures. Robert Owen, born there in 1771, became a pioneering socialist and a founder of the cooperative movement. Pryce Pryce-Jones turned the town's flannel trade into one of the world's first mail-order businesses in the 1860s, supplying customers across Europe and, it is said, royalty. On the Swansea Valley edge of the county, Craig-y-Nos Castle was the home of the opera star Adelina Patti, who built a private theatre there in 1891.
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Owain Glyndŵr
Published
He was a Welsh squire trained in law who ended up proclaimed Prince of Wales, and then he simply vanished. Nobody knows where Owain Glyndŵr died.