History
Following the Norman Conquest the area was owned by the Lord of Brecon, Bernard de Neufmarche, eventually passing into the possession of the Crown in 1521. It was sold by the Crown in 1819 to raise funds depleted by the cost of the Napoleonic Wars. The entrepreneur John Christie purchased some of this land and subsequently constructed a tramroad across the area from Sennybridge to Ystradgynlais in an effort to improve agricultural production though the venture ran into financial difficulties.
Parts of the area, notably on the flanks of Cefn Cul above Cray Reservoir, were set aside during the 19th century for rabbit breeding for both fur and meat. 'Pillow mounds' remain as the most obvious sign of this venture. These long low earth mounds were constructed to allow the animals to burrow in what were otherwise thin soils.
Since October 2005 it has formed the core of the Fforest Fawr Geopark, the first Geopark in Wales and one of several areas in the UK designated for their outstanding geological heritage.
Read more about this topic: Fforest Fawr
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“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
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—Erma Brombeck (20th century)
“The History of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony—periods when the antithesis is in abeyance.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)