It stretches from the Leri estuary in the west to Moel y Llyn in the east, and from Lodge Park in the north to Talybont on the A487 to the south; the total area is 9 square miles (23 km2).

The parish includes Llangynfelyn, Tre-Taliesin, Tre'r Ddôl and Craig y Penrhyn.

The museum was created in the late 1960s by the academic R J Thomas, editor of the Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru.

Soar Chapel was chosen for its links with Humphrey Rowland Jones (1832–1895), who had begun the 1858–60 Welsh revival there.

[6] The poet and farmer, Dic Jones, and the writer Elma Mary Williams were born in Tre'r Ddôl.