AHRC Contested Common Land Project: Universities of Newcastle and Lancaster Please note: this is a working paper which will be revised and expanded during the course of the project. Please do not quote or reproduce sections of this paper without contacting the Contested Common Land project team. Additional information, particularly on the recent history of common land management in the case study area, would be welcomed by the team. Contact:
[email protected] Draft: 26.5.09. ELAN AND CLAERWEN VALLEYS, POWYS: HISTORICAL BRIEFING PAPER1 Angus Winchester and Eleanor Straughton (Revised version, May 2009) The case study centres on upland pastures in the Elan and Claerwen valleys, in the parish of Llansantfraid Cwmdeuddwr,2 Radnorshire (now in the modern county of Powys). The outer boundaries of the area under study coincide with those of the parish and embraced a territory of considerable antiquity, the commote of Cwmdeuddwr (literally ‘the commote between the two waters’, i.e. the rivers Elan and Wye). In the medieval period, most of the land within these bounds formed an upland grange of Strata Florida Abbey, ‘a large area of common pasture with isolated holdings.’3 The case study comprises two contiguous land units: the registered common land of Cwmdeuddwr Common (RCL 36), which lies along the north-east edge of the parish and is managed by the Cwmdeuddwr Commoners and Graziers Association; and the large area of de-registered hill grazing (RCL 66), within the catchment of the Claerwen and Elan rivers, which forms part of the Elan Valley Estate of Dŵr Cymru/Welsh Water.