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Llanwrtyd Wells

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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An urban district of Breconshire, south Wales, with a station on the central Wales section of the London & North Western railway, 231 m. from London. It is situated in the midst of wild mountain scenery on the river Irfon, a right-bank tributary of the Wye. The place is chiefly noted for its sulphur and chalybeate springs, the former being the strongest of the kind in Wales. The medicinal properties of the sulphur water were discovered, or perhaps rediscovered, in 1732 by a famous Welsh writer, the Rev. Theophilus Evans, then vicar of Llangammarch (to which living Llanwrtyd was a chapelry till 1871). Saline water is obtained daily in the season from Builth Wells. The Irfon is celebrated as a trout-stream. Out of the civil parish, which has an area of 10,785 acres and had in 1 9 01 a population of 854, there was formed in 1907 the urban district, comprising 1611 acres, and with an estimated population at the date of formation of 812. Welsh is the predominant language of the district.

Four miles lower down the Irfon valley, at the junction of the Cammarch and Irfon, and with a station on the London & North Western railway, is the village of Llangammarch, noted for its barium springs. The ancient parish of Llangammarch consists of the townships of Penbuallt and Treflis, the wells being in the former, which comprises 11,152 acres and had in 1901 a population of only 433. John Penry, the Puritan martyr, was born at Cefn-brith in this parish. Charles Wesley's wife, Sarah Gwynne, was of Garth, an old residence just outside the parish.