Penwyllt

Penwyllt (Welsh: "wild headland"[1]) is a hamlet located in the upper Swansea Valley in Powys, Wales, lying within the Brecon Beacons National Park.

A former quarrying village, quicklime and silica brick production centre, its fortunes rose and fell as a result of the Industrial Revolution in South Wales.

Beneath Penwyllt and the surrounding area is the extensive limestone cave system of Ogof Ffynnon Ddu, part of which was the first designated underground national nature reserve in the UK.

[6] In 1819 Fforest Fawr ("Great Forest of Brecknock") was enclosed or divided up into fields, and large parts of it became the property of John Christie, a Scottish businessman based in London, who had become wealthy through the import of indigo.

In total there were fifteen lime kilns at Penwyllt: On 29 July 1862, an Act of Parliament created the Dulais Valley Mineral Railway,[13] to transport goods to the docks at Briton Ferry, Neath built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

World War II created the final closure, as the need to scale production upwards for the larger coastal meant the heavily manual process of Penwyllt quarry was uneconomic compared to other British and foreign facilities which could bulk ship by sea.

Patti Row, a historic block of back-to-back houses dating from the days of the Brecon Forest Tramroad,[17] survives in a derelict state.

In 2006, the Torchwood episode Countrycide was filmed in Penwyllt to stand in for the fictional village of Brynblaidd in the Brecon Beacons, where the titular team faces a group of cannibals.