“Scenery of the wildest and most picturesque description was rife and plentiful to a degree; hills were here, hills were there; some tall and sharp, others huge and humpy; hills were on every side; only a slight opening to the west seemed to present itself. What a valley! I exclaimed. But on passing through the opening I found myself in another, wilder and stranger, if possible. Full to the west was a long hill rising up like the roof of a barn, an enormous round hill on its north-east side, and on its south-east the tail of the range which I had long had on my left—there were trees and groves and running waters, but all in deep shadow, for night was now close at hand.”
OLD BRIDGE, DINAS MAWDDWY
A stream enters the valley of the Dyfi at Mallwyd, and a capital road ascends it, crosses a shoulder, and descends into the valley of the Banw, leading ultimately to Welshpool. It was in the Cwm that opens upon Mallwyd and its ramifications that lurked the “Red-haired Banditti of Mawddwy.”
After the cessation of the Wars of the Roses many lawless men, bred to deeds of violence, found time hang heavy on their hands, and lacking employment, a certain number of outlaws or felons gravitated to this wild region, and made their headquarters in this valley, whence they sallied forth, marauding, cattle-lifting, and murdering. Robert Vaughan, the Welsh antiquary, who flourished shortly after, says that they never tired of
“robbing, burning of houses, and murthering of people, in soe much that being very numerous, they did often drive great droves of cattell somtymes to the number of a hundred or more from one countrey to another at middle day, as in tyme of warre, without feare, shame, pittie, or punishment, to the utter undoing of the poorer sort.”
The occupants of manor- and farm-houses had to fix scythes and spiked bars in their chimneys to prevent the marauders entering their houses by descending the wide chimneys at night. And within the memory of man many such have been removed.
At last a commission was issued to Lewis Owen, Baron of the Exchequer of Wales, and Sheriff of Merionethshire, to clear the country of them.
In pursuance of his orders, Owen raised a body of sturdy men, and stealing up the valley on Christmas Eve, 1554, when the robbers were keeping high revel, he fell on them and secured eighty, whom he tried and hanged on the spot.