Newtown & Builth Wells

1 Sep

As we drove into Newtown, I asked my dad if he thought the town was in fact new? He responded that it most likely wasn’t, as places with such names are often ironically old. This turned out to be the case, as I later found out after some research! Newtown was founded as a market town in the 13th century, and has some very interesting history! It’s website for the area is extensive in information about its history and heritage, along with letting potential visitors know about a heritage walk that one can do around the town. However, yet again, there is no mention of the Gorsedd stone circle. It took my dad and me ages to find out whether the town even had one, let alone where it was located. Eventually, after making some phone calls, we got a location and parked in the main car park for the town. Climbing up an embankment we found the river, and as we had been told over the phone, there is a bridge that leads over to a park where the stone circle is located. We found that bridge and it was a surprisingly cool site.

As you walk across this bridge, the views of the river are stunning, as can be seen down below.

Once across the bridge and river, you come across an informative sign. Now, so far I have been relatively good with my picture taking, and have been able to go back and read all of the information on the signs, even if those signs are in poor condition. However, since putting my phone camera to wide angle to get better pictures of the stone circles, it meant that for this particular sign, the lens blurred the information about the stone circle! I am very disappointed, as there is no information about the stone circle online, and I cannot judge how this stone circle fits into the wider narrative anymore. Fool!

As you can see, the right side of the sign is visible to read, but the left side is affected by glare or the lens just didn’t focus properly, meaning the information about the stone circle, which is in the top left, isn’t readable. This is such a shame, but after seeing that Powys council created this sign, I typed into google ‘Powys county council, stone circle’ and it came up with an article by the County Times that describes how there is a community group attempting to find out more information about the stone circle, and to hear people’s experiences of it and/or the Eisteddfod that happened in Newtown sometime in the 1960’s. This is interesting as it is the first time I have seen others trying to find out more about the history of a stone circle, and it would be fascinating to talk to those involved and see if they have come up with anything as of yet.

This stone circle is not too different to the others, and as we counted the stones there were an unusual amount of 11, rather than 12 as is seen in most smaller Gorsedd stone circles such as this. However, the center stone was massive and when me and my dad got up to take some panoramic images of the stones, whilst trying to get out of the way of the camera, my dad fell off the edge and almost hurt himself! Be careful out there kids! Here’s the panoramic images I ended up taking. Thought I would include them as a new feature as I think they are quite cool.

As can be seen in this image, there is a stone hiding just behind a bush, something we didn’t notice until looking back at this picture! After admiring this stone circle we headed back up into town and went to have some lunch. I had a gammon steak which is one of my favorites and my dad had a burger that looked tasty. We didn’t stick around for too long as the day was getting on and we had to drive to the final site before making our way home.

Builth Wells

It took us an hour to get to Builth Wells from Newtown and, as I was feeling tired, my dad drove the van down for us. This site was not particularly different from any of the others, as it was located just off a car park, next to a park and a river. However, I may have been too tired to get a real feel of the place, and my picture of the stone circle absolutely supports this idea, as the image is pretty poor.

This can certainly be explained by the fact that we had collectively driven for about 4 hours already, walked a fair amount, had a late night the night before where a few drinks were had, and we had just eaten a very nice meal so naturally, my photo taking skills had deteriorated somewhat. One thing of note with this stone circle is the presence of that single stone on the inside of the circle. I went over to check and there was nothing written on it and it doesn’t seem to have a function that I have been able to find so far. This site, as mentioned above, is located right by a river, and there was an informative sign where the stone circle is marked on the map, but there is no information about the stone circle present.

There was some great information about the local wildlife however and the history of the town. Well worth a visit if you want to see some otters and rare birds.