Garreg Hir - a historic landscape

Tirluniau Hanesyddol

Historic Landscapes

Ymgyrch Diogelu Cymru Wledig

Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales

Historic landscapes show the remains of the past that make us think about the way people lived there.

Visiting such places allows us to make use of known archaeological and historical detail which, when we look at the imprints of past generations upon the land, connects us through our imagination with those lost generations.

The balance between fact and fiction is personal to the viewer.

Garreg-hir stands sentinel over the three Bwich-y-garreg lakes like the backbone of a great creature lying locked in the rock whose limbs extend eastwards as the ridges of Mynydd Clogau and Esgair Cwmowen.

It forms the easternmost crest of Montgomeryshire's Western Uplands Special Landscape Area, separating and protecting the softer lands of the Rhiw valleys from the wind and rain of the western mountains and moorlands. The summit gives an unsurpassed panoramic view of mid Wales. On a clear day the vista extends from the Brecon Beacons, past Pumlumon, Cadair Idris and Aran Fawddwy to a glimpse of Arenig. It then sweeps through to the Berwyn and on over the gentle lands of the Severn valley with their backdrop of the Long Mynd and the Radnorshire uplands.

In this landscape the imprint of the past is clear in the present. The Bronze Age people buried their dead in cairns on the high ridges of Garreg-hir and Mynydd Clogau. To the north lies Carneddau. The funerary urn from a cairn here is in pride of piece at Welshpool's Powysland Museum. East of Carneddau, another Bronze Age monument, Y Capel stone circle, nestles in a bowl in the hills.

How did the people use this land? Stand on Garreg-hir and you can almost feel them walking past you. The imprint of the Bronze Age is writ large but the Iron Age has left us with virtually nothing. Why are there no remains of this period around Garreg-hir but there are plenty to the West and further East? The Romans did not seem to love these uplands either, there is only one record of their presence anywhere near Garreg-hir - Sarn Helen runs north from Caersws over Mynydd Clogau and away towards Llanerfyl.

When the legions returned to Rome and Britain fell into the Dark Ages then here, as elsewhere, the native people left little imprint on the land but, as the Dark Ages emerged into the medieval and Post Medieval period, then the mark of man becomes clear once again. We see the remains of hut platforms, peat mounds, field systems and habitable homes.

To the north of Garreg-hir the old drovers' road runs through Cefn Coch. In earlier times, could it also have been the route used by the monks of Strata Marchella to reach their monastic Manor of Talerddig? Perhaps here on the high heather moors they produced wool, honey and beeswax, essential commodities of a sustainable holy community.

The OS map shows a landscape criss- crossed by bridleways and footpaths but do not be led to believe you could walk them all with equal ease. The changes brought by vehicles in the last century have altered their usage so that some are transformed from bridleways into roads while others have long been obliterated by vegetation and elsewhere new tracks have appeared - serving today's farmers.

How will the need for farm diversification and the pressure for open access to the countryside change the pattern of land use in this century and what foot prints will it leave for the curious in centuries to come? Our current landuse is part of the continuum of historic landscapes. We must allow them to change with the times without damaging their links with the past. The sense of place and the sense of connection to and through the generations of people who have stood on Garreg-hir in the past is the essence of an historic landscape.

Arm Cresswell is a research scientist at the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research (IGER). She is a Committee member of CPRW's Montgomeryshire Branch and gave evidence at the recent Montgomeryshire Wind Farms Public Inquiry on behalf of the Conservation of Upland Montgomeryshire, of which she is Secretary.