CAMBRIAN MOUNTAINS INITIATIVE, MID WALES

Historic Significance

The Cambrian Mountains Initiative area has a diverse historic environment with a wide variety of building materials and building types. The historic environment also reflects the past economy of the area and the pattern of human occupation. It varies from the sheep-farming uplands, to the 19th century development of railway towns such as Llandovery, to the leadworking areas of Cwm Ystwyth and the coal-mining areas of the Carmarthenshire valleys.

The majority of farm buildings date from the era of agricultural improvement in the early 19th century and many are associated with the great estates of the area, such as Hafod, and Trawscoed.

Impact on the local community

The Cambrian Mountains Initiative is a wide-ranging project that aims to help promote rural enterprise, protect the environment and add value to products and services in Mid Wales. In doing this it has the potential to enhance the historic environment of this rural area of Wales and to make a big impact on the local community through its support of farming communities. In some cases this will hopefully enable farm buildings to remain in use for the purposes for which they were built. In other cases it will enable diversification to bring appropriate new uses to farm buildings that would otherwise be redundant and at risk of loss. The sustainability of upland farms is vital to the future of the communities of the Cambrian Mountains.

The project was inspired by HRH The Prince of Wales who is the Cambrian Mountains Initiative President.

The Role of The Prince's Regeneration Trust

Our objective is to characterise the historic environment of the Cambrian Mountains, to identify those buildings at risk that need to be rescued and to encourage projects that will achieve this. The Initiative seeks to preserve this diversity and to add to the understanding of the Cambrians. We have started by characterising the farmsteads of the region as, compared to many other building types, such as houses and places of worship, farm buildings are comparatively poorly understood. The project being undertaken by this group takes an overview of the surviving stock of farm buildings and draws out themes and patterns in the built heritage. It seeks to identify the buildings most at risk and those where there might be opportunities for repair or adaptive reuse. Click here to download the Pilot Project Report (PDF, 5.7MB).

We aim to deliver an exemplar conservation project for the adaptive reuse of a building within the Cambrian Mountains and we are part of the Steering Group for the Initiative. We also seek funding to preserve and interpret the historic landscape, especially that of the main lead-mining area.