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Tours > Wales > Llanidloes
Llanidloes (Thlan id Loyce)
Llanidloes looks more like an English border town than a Welsh one, with its black and white timbered houses so reminiscent of Cheshire and Shropshire, and its Market Hall, built around 1600 that was for many years the meeting place for the dissident Quakers, Methodists and Baptists. It now houses the Museum of Local History and Industry. The town was also famous for its part in the Chartist Riots.
In 1839, Welsh newspapers reported that the Chartists, having previously been apprehended for rioting, came armed with guns, pistols, pikes and bludgeons to the Trewythen Arms, Llanidloes, where they broke doors and windows to force their way in. They then rescued the parties that had been apprehended, "nearly killed the police officers," turned the landlord and his family out of the house, and completely ransacked the whole place.
They even went so far as to "run a pike through the hat of the resident magistrate." In the face of this threat to the British Crown, the local Montgomeryshire Militia were ordered to hold themselves ready to act, and if necessary, the South Salopian Yeomanry "will be instantly marched to the neighbourhood." The so-called ringleaders in the revolt were treated harshly with long prison sentences or deported for life.
John Wesley often came to Llanidloes to preach; the John Wesley Stone stands outside the museum. The ancient church contains a beautiful hammer-beam roof and other treasures that came from the dissolved Cwmhir (Coom Here) Abbey in the Clywedog Valley. The charming little town can be reached going south from Wrexham on the A483 via Oswestry, Welshpool and Newtown; or on the same road coming north from Builth.
Next Stop: Knighton
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