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Historic Landscapes |
Historic Landscape Characterisation
The Elan Valley
Introduction
The following description, taken from the Historic Landscapes Register, identifies the essential historic landscape themes in the Elan Valley historic landscape area.This remote area includes the larger part of the catchment of the river Elan and its tributary, the river Claerwen, which drain the south eastern side of the Cambrian Mountains in mid Wales. It comprises an extensive area of heavily dissected upland plateau between abut 400m and 550m above OD, with the deeply incised valleys of the Elan and Claerwen providing the only routes east-west across this otherwise isolated and deserted part of Wales. The valley floors fall from over 300m above OD in the west to 200m above OD in the east, from where the river Elan continues to flow for a short distance beyond the area described here, to join the river Wye south of Rhayader.
This area is a prime example in Wales of a landscape showing human endeavour on a grand scale, having been substantially altered by major civil engineering projects connected with the water industry and its managed estate. The projects encompass the construction of a series of massive dams and ancillary works undertaken in two principal states between the end of the 19th and the middle of the 20th centuries. The first stage was amongst the greatest 19th century civil engineering achievements in the whole of Britain, and was reported once as being the ‘eighth wonder of the world’.
The series of reservoirs, known collectively as the Elan Valley, was started by the Birmingham Corporation in 1893, with the commencement of the Caban-coch dam. This massive structure and its three subsidiary dams were described in an official report of the time as being ‘of cyclopean rubble embedded in concrete and faced up-stream and down-stream with shaped stones arranged in snecked courses’. By the time they were completed in 1904, the Corporation had not only built the expected range of straining and valve towers, settling tanks, filter beds and other machine and generator houses necessary to control the water level and maintain its steady flow, but also enclosed most the land immediately surrounding the reservoirs with a succession of massive stone walls and elaborate boundaries to protect the water from contamination. The height of the reservoirs enabled water to reach the outskirts of Birmingham by gravity alone, without the expense of pumping, along a remarkable system of buried aqueducts, 126km long. The Birmingham Corporation employed direct labour for the scheme, which involved the construction of a railway to transport materials from the Cambrian Railways at Rhayader; in excess of 50 kilometres of track had to be laid to serve the various construction sites. Between 1906 and 1909, a small, high quality garden village in distinctive Arts and Crafts style, comprising a neat collection of detached and semi-detached stone houses ranged along the southern bank of the Elan, was built at the foot of the main dam to house those destined to work at and maintain the machinery and apparatus of the dam complex. The village included a school, a shop and an estate office.
Much of this imposed landscape has survived more or less unaltered since the turn of the century as the estate has been strictly managed, to preserve water purity, by successive water boards and companies. The landscape has, therefore, avoided many of the recent trends for large-scale forestry and other upland agricultural improvements. Provision was made for the future expansion of the original scheme with the construction of the Claerwen dam in the adjacent valley during 1948–52, making the Elan Valley complex one of the largest drinking water supply schemes in Britain with a combined capacity of over 100 billion litres. Since the privatization of the water companies, the ownership and management of the Elan Valley Estate has been passed to a charitable trust, which is charged with preserving the area’s unique heritage and continuing its sympathetic management. This will, hopefully, maintain the landscapes atmosphere and serenity.
The remote and inaccessible upland areas which surround the reservoirs are liberally scattered with spectacular Bronze Age burial cairns and standing stones, while there is a Roman marching camp at Esgair Perfedd. In the medieval period, the area was part of the extensive Cwmteuddwr grange of common pasture and isolated holdings belonging to the Cistercian Abbey at Strata Florida, Ceredigion. There are also post-medieval farmsteads, and a considerable number of late 18th and early 19th century mining sites and industrial monuments. Although physically dwarfed by, and secondary to, the theme of this landscape, many of these sites have been so well-preserved by the estate that they form a valuable historic adjunct to an otherwise modern landscape. The area also has important associations with Percy Bysshe Shelley who extolled the virtues of its character whilst writing his poetry at Nantgwyllt.
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The Making of the Elan Valley Landscape
Though representing a quintessential Victorian and early Edwardian designed landscape, the Birmingham Corporation reservoir scheme in the Elan Valley was in fact superimposed upon a much more ancient landscape which had developed over the course of many thousands of years. The forces which have helped to form this special landscape are outlined in the following sections.
Environments, Boundaries and Perceptions
Medieval and Early Post-Medieval Land Use and Settlement
Landed Estates and Agricultural Improvements in the 18th and 19th Centuries
Metal Mining in the Late 18th and 19th Centuries
Early Transport and Communication
Literary and Antiquarian Associations
The Elan Valley Reservoir Scheme
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Other sources of information
Further sources of information on the Elan Valley can be found in various published and unpublished sources.
Published and unpublished sources of information
Other websites with information about the Elan Valley
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Character areas
The following historic landscape character areas have been defined within the historic landscape area.
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Character areas defined in the Elan Valley Historic Landscape |
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For further information please contact the Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust at this address, or link to the Countryside Council for Wales' web site at www.ccw.gov.uk.
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