Elan Valley · Present day

The Elan Valley Today

Discover the landscape as it is now, from the great dams to surviving farmhouses, with photographs and stories connecting the present to the past.

Explore the valley

Places and stories to discover

Explore the dams, farms and historic buildings that continue to shape the character of this remarkable Welsh landscape.

Reservoirs · Engineering

The Dams

Explore the history, construction and photographs of the Elan Valley's remarkable water-supply scheme.

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Historic photograph of the old Hirnant house

Farms · Rural heritage

The Farms

From Ciloerwynt to Hirnant, follow the stories of the valley's historic farmsteads through photographs and archive material.

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Then and now

A changing landscape, a living history

The Elan Valley holds traces of its former communities alongside familiar places that can still be visited and photographed today. This collection brings those stories together, from surviving buildings to the photographs that record earlier ways of life.

From the collection

Featured farm histories

Two fascinating stories recorded in the Present Day archive.

Historic photograph of Ciloerwynt longhouse

Claerwen Valley · Historic house

Ciloerwynt / Cilewent

Discover the Welsh longhouse that was dismantled and moved to St Fagans in 1959, with photographs from its original site and later home.

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Farm life · Film archive

Hirnant Farm

Explore archive photographs of farm life, peat cutting in 1966 and historic films of shearing and peat cutting.

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