rise and fall of an industrial hamlet
Summary
This walking trail from Craig-y-nos Country Park to Penwyllt is suitable for families with older children (8+). It explores the legacy of C19th and early C20th industry in a wild setting.
Penwyllt grew from the 1870’s through to the early 1900’s as demand for lime and silica grew to meet the needs of agriculture and heavy industry.
Life was tough here with severe winter weather and hazardous working conditions but the people of Penwyllt considered themselves fortunate, for work was readily available, the air was generally clean, basic housing was newly built, and there was room for gardens big enough to grow food – a huge contrast to the heavily polluted and cramped conditions suffered in the industrialised valleys to the south.
As technology advanced the demand for lime and silica declined and the community’s fate was sealed – the brickworks were closed by 1940 whilst the lime works struggled on for two more decades. By the end of the 1980’s the village was almost deserted, the land sold off and many of the buildings demolished.
Today Penwyllt is largely the haunt of cavers, naturalists and walkers following the Beacons Way. A handful of houses remain – please respect residents’ privacy and take care not to damage the remaining legacies of an industrious past.
- Start/finish Craig-y-nos Country Park (OS grid reference SN 839155) (postcode SA9 1GL)
- Distance: 7.2km / 4.5 miles
- Ascent About 220m (725ft)
- Time: Allow about 3.5 hours to fully enjoy the walk.
- Map: Use Ordnance Survey Explorer map OL12 ‘BBNP western area’
Access
There is one steep grassy ascent and one steep-ish descent of a stony track (both around 90m/300ft). Largely following bridle tracks and old tramways, there are four stiles on the route, otherwise gates. Noisy dogs in the farm kennels. Some mud patches after rain. In the walk description, Ordnance Survey grid references are given at certain points e.g. (SN 849161) to assist with route-finding.
There are no facilities at Penwyllt which is over 300m/100ft above sea level and is exposed to the weather – rain, wind or sun. Ensure you are properly prepared. Dogs on leads in vicinity of livestock please.
Walk description
1. Leave the car park via the fish pond and follow the path bearing right to the river. Cross the bridge and walk upstream. Just before the next bridge, turn right, up a slope. Exit the country park through the gate, bear left and follow the bridleway for almost 1km to Pwllcoediog Farm.
Turn right between barns; there follows a 90m ascent known to former Penwyllt residents as ‘the Task’! Climb over two stiles and walk diagonally across, heading for the stile in the top right hand corner of the second field (SN 849161). Keeping in the same direction, head for the hill’s crest and the corner stile beyond (SN 850158) – the path here is hard to see, so if you find yourself looking at a field boundary straight ahead, keep it to your right and follow it to the next stile. Follow the twisting path for over 300m to the road. Notice small limestone quarries and remains of crude limekilns on either side of this path.
Though the main quarry closed in 2007, limestone had been quarried around here for centuries. Early quarrying was for the manufacture of lime for agriculture and building purposes. Lumps of limestone and a fuel, typically coal, were stacked in alternate layers in a limekiln and fired up over a period. The remains of both crude and complex limekilns are scattered about this area.
3. Turn left up the road, walking to the end of the tarmac and through the first set of gates. Immediately on your right is the old “Craig-y-nos (Penwyllt)” railway station and platform, forming part of the old Neath to Brecon railway line. Walk along the railway line to the right, and after 160m, fork left towards ‘Powell Street’ terrace. Cross the vehicle track to the kissing gate. Once the home of quarry-workers and their families, the terrace is now home to South Wales Caving Club. The track in front formed part of the old Brecon Forest Tramroad network which ran between Sennybridge and Ystradgynlais.
4. Through the kissing gate, continue ahead looking out for flat stones with holes along the path. This route was to have been a part of the Brecon Forest Tramroad but was never used. Enter the National Nature Reserve and continue to an impressive embanked tramway incline which crosses the path. This tramroad was used to bring silica sand from Pwll Byfre (SN 874166) to Penwyllt brickworks.
The quarrying of ‘silica rock’ (a pure sandstone known then as the Basal Grit but today as the Twrch Sandstone) began at Penwyllt when the mainline railway between Neath and Brecon was constructed through here in the 1860’s. It was quarried from the hillside behind the works until, in the 1890’s, a deposit of ‘silica sand’ was discovered 2.5km away to the northeast at Pwll Byfre. By 1903 a tramroad and long incline had been constructed to bring the silica sand down to the works where it was shaped into bricks and fired in circular brick-kilns to make refractory bricks which were then exported by rail for lining furnaces. The works closed in 1935 and the remains demolished in the 1980’s.
The national nature reserve was designated in 1975 to protect both the rocky wildlife habitats on the surface but also the calcite deposits and cave-dwelling species in what is Britain’s deepest cave (274.5m). At around 60km, Ogof Ffynnon Ddu (the ‘cave of the black spring’) is also one of our longest. The reserve is managed today by Natural Resources Wales.
5. Turn right onto the embankment, descending the tramroad for over 0.5km as it curves gently right and then left, passing above the terrace and then the ruins of the old silica brickworks. The bases of several circular brick-kilns can still be seen below the path. There are many trip hazards around the brickworks so it’s best to keep to the path and head for the bridge over the old railway beyond.
6. Cross the cutting via the bridge and, once through the gate, drop down the bank to the right into a rough field. Keep along the fence line for 60m to a kissing gate in the field corner. Drop carefully onto the railway and walk north along the old line. When level with the trees/cottages, turn left, through a hollow to a stile into the field in which the four-arched Pen-y-Foel limekilns stand. Continue to The Stump – once a tavern, now accommodation for cavers. A tramroad led from the quarries to the kiln tops into which lumps of limestone and coal were tipped. The mounds in front of the kiln are lime waste. A railway siding ran from the ‘draw-arches’ to take the lime away in covered railway trucks.
7. Take the track through the right-hand of two gates, veering left to follow the field wall, then across and down the field to Pen-y-pant House. Turn left down the road to a bridleway on the right after 70m. Follow this rough track for 650m until you emerge on a quiet lane.
To your right is the 30 hectare Allt Rhongyr ‘open access’ reserve managed by the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales and boasting limestone grassland and woodland – and superb views over the upper Swansea Valley.
8. Turn right, go past the first house to pick up the bridleway to the left of the second house. Follow this track for 670m back to the gate where you left the country park to re-enter the grounds and return to the start.