Watermills

The Brecon Beacons is an area full of small streams, and at one time it was also full of small watermills. Up Cusop Dingle, there is still Paper Mill Cottage (which has a lovely garden, seen from the road). Brynmelin, about halfway up the Dingle (and invisible from the road behind trees) was one of the first houses in the area to have electricity, generated by the mill at the bottom of the hill (the millpond there is now part of the garden).

The mill at Talgarth, now restored and a tourist attraction, was a working mill for the best part of a thousand years, right up to 1947, with a mention in some of the earliest records of the area.
There were watermills in Llanigon, now vanished apart from a few foundation stones.
Water is one resource around here which is abundant!
So I was very pleased to send off my cheque to the Llangattock Green Valleys Micro Hydro Co-operative, which is offering shares at the moment to develop four new watermills to generate electricity in the National Park. They haven't quite got their target amount of £690,000 yet, so have been given permission to extend the share offer for another month. The minimum amount you can invest is £250, and the maximum is £20,000. They were at the Hay Spring Fair just before Easter, and have been holding meetings around Powys to publicise the offer. Their website can be reached on the sidebar, under Green Valleys.