Near Montgomery the Severn begins to change its course, and to trend more towards the north. Down a fertile valley it makes its way towards Welshpool, practically the capital of the shire, for it is almost double the size of Montgomery, and is the assize town. Place and church date from olden times. Near to the town—approached through a gateway in the main street—is the family seat of Castell Coch (the Red Castle, from the stone of which it is built), but more commonly called by the simpler title of Powys Castle. It has been greatly modernised, but a good deal is of Elizabethan or of Jacobean date, and some goes back to the thirteenth century. The site, a rocky knoll, descending steeply in natural terraces, has been occupied from the beginning of the twelfth century, and the earlier building had, of course, its due share of sieges, for, as the centre of the old district of Powysland, it was a place of some importance. In the surrounding park are some fine old oaks, and the views from the terraces under the castle are noted for their beauty; they look over the wooded lowland and down the valley of the Severn to the arched back of the Long Mountain, and the bolder outlines of the Berwyns, of which one mass is foreshortened to be like a huge tumulus and the other forms a sharp pyramid. Entrenchments of various kinds and sizes show that all the district round was formerly one of importance. The noted “Offa’s Dyke” is only a very few miles away, and interest is added to the sometimes monotonous aspect of the Long Mountain by a large earthwork on the summit, where, according to tradition, was fought in 1294 the last battle for the independence of Wales.
The Severn, still working in a direction more northerly than easterly, leaves the Long Mountain at the gap through which a railway passes towards Shrewsbury, and then sweeps back into its former course as it rounds the feet of the Breidden Hills. It needs but a glance at their bold and rugged outlines to see that they must be carved from a different rock to that of which the Long Mountain and its neighbours is formed. They consist of masses of lava and of hard slaty rock, of a more ancient date than the mudstones of the adjoining district, forming, in fact, a kind of outpost of the Ordovician or Lower Silurian rocks of the west. The highest point, Moel-y-golfa, is as nearly as possible 1,200 feet above sea-level, and its pyramidal outline adds to its apparent elevation. Another, the Breidden proper, is a heavy mass like a flattened dome; it bears a pillar to commemorate Rodney’s victory in 1782. The hills are well suited for a watch-tower, for they command a view far and wide—in one direction over the Welsh hills, in another towards the Shropshire lowlands.
MOEL-Y-GOLFA AND BREIDDEN, FROM WELSHPOOL (p. [87]).
Two or three miles further a tributary enters the Severn, larger than any which it has hitherto received. This is the Vyrnwy, which drains a considerable area south of a watershed extending from near Aran Mowddwy to the Berwyn Hills, though now a heavy tribute has been exacted from its waters by the town of Liverpool. This great feat of engineering was completed, after years of labour, in 1890. Up to that time Liverpool had drawn its main supply from reservoirs on Rivington Pike. A huge dam, as our illustration (page [89]) shows, has been built across the narrowest part of the Vyrnwy valley. It is 1,255 feet in length and 60 in height; the foundations, which at some parts had to be carried down to a depth of 50 feet, resting on the solid rock. By this means a lake has been formed, four miles in length, which hides beneath its waters—800 feet above sea-level—a little village and its church. A curious mound rises near the junction of the two rivers, designed, as some think, to guard the passage; and then the Severn, turning again to the east, passes on towards Shrewsbury. Its valley now has become more open: parks and country houses here and there dapple the gentler slopes within no great distance of the river, and the views of the hills are always beautiful.
THE VYRNWY EMBANKMENT, BEFORE THE FLOODING OF THE VALLEY.
Photo: J. Maclardy, Oswestry.