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Cwm Berwyn

CWM BERWYN

GRID REFERENCE: SN 696539
AREA IN HECTARES: 3177

Historic Background

This character area once lay within Cwmwd Penardd. A large portion of it lay within the Bishop of St David’s Llanddewi Breifi estate, with the remainder probably considered Crown land. Place-name evidence - Llethr Hafodydd - suggests transhumance was practised in the past. It straddles a trans-mountain route-way that provided communication between Tregaron and lands to the west, with the upper Tywi valley and the east. This was an important line of communication in the past, but is now used mainly by tourists. Apart from the extreme southern tip, which was partially enclosed prior to afforestation, the whole of this historic landscape area comprised unenclosed moorland and sheep-walk. In the 1960s the Forestry Commission afforested the whole area.

Description and essential historic landscape components

This is a vast tract of hard-edged forestry lying across former open land. It achieves a maximum height of over 480m, is on average between 400-450m high, and runs down to approximately 300m at its southern end. Apart from enclosures at the southern end, this area was entirely unenclosed moorland prior to afforestation in the 1960s. The plantations, tracks and other features of afforestation now form the major landscape components of this area.

Recorded archaeology in this area is rich and varied. Mostly it consists of abandoned cottages and farmsteads of post-Medieval date, and other agricultural pre-afforestation features such as boundary markers. However, a time-depth component is lent to the landscape by three Bronze Age round barrows and two putative similar sites, a Bronze Age standing stone, two possible stones of the same date, and a Roman marching camp.

This area is clearly defined by the surrounding open land.

Cwm Berwyn map

Base map reproduced from the OS map with the permission of Ordnance Survey on behalf of The Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office, © Crown Copyright 2001.
All rights reserved. Unauthorised reproduction infringes Crown Copyright and may lead to prosecution or civil proceedings. Licence Number: GD272221