Ciliau Aeron (English: where the valley of the river Aeron narrows) is a small village 4 miles from Aberaeron in Ceredigion, Wales on the left bank of the River Aeron.
The word Ciliau comes from the Welsh for corners. Aeron Corners in English refers to the many bends taken by the river through this area.
The village post office has long gone, but Ciliau has a thriving school and a well-used village hall. There are also fishing lakes in the village, as well as garden nurseries (which is no longer open to the public), an organic farm shop and a self-catering holiday centre for special needs children operated by the Ty Glyn Davis Trust. The Trust also runs an eighteenth-century walled garden alongside the River Aeron; it is open to the public from dawn to dusk, every day of the week, without charge. Ciliau Aeron Halt was a station on the line from Lampeter to Aberaeron that closed in 1951.
The Dylan Thomas Trail runs through Ciliau Aeron, passing the Tyglyn Hotel, which once was the holiday home of the publisher, Geoffrey Faber – T. S. Eliot used to holiday there in the 1930s. Eliot’s time in the village is described in A Farm, Two Mansions and a Bungalow, which also gives an account of the time spent by Dylan Thomas in nearby New Quay and Talsarn.
The dockworker-poet James Hughes was born in Ciliau in 1799, and the poet-priest David Davis (Dafis Castellhywel, 1745-1827) had his first ministry in the village’s Unitarian chapel.
Just a mile away is the National Trust’s Llanerchaeron estate.