Description

The Dyfi estuary looks peaceful and unchanging, but this book tells a different and dramatic story. There have been armies, great estates, a centre of seaborne trade, a great woollen industry, cattle droving, fishing of salmon and herring, and internationally renowned mines and quarries. Now its post-industrial landscape is a place of sheep farming, conservation, and tourism.

This highly readable book is the first to tell the whole story. It will be an essential companion for all those who know and visit the Dyfi, with 160 beautiful illustrations of maps, paintings, drawings, and photographs. It puts the local history of the estuary and the land surrounding Machynlleth into a context of thousands of years as a strategic centre of Wales and of European trade. Sections cover Geography, Travel, History, Towns and Villages alongside Overviews of farming, forestry, fishing, industries, trade, and historic houses.

Richard Mayou was Professor of Psychiatry and Fellow of Nuffield College at Oxford University and is now retired. He has visited the Dyfi area every year of his life, since 1952 staying at a family house on the very edge of the estuary between Aberdyfi and Pennal. He is a regular visitor to, and treasured supporter of, the Trust’s work. This is Richard’s second local history book; his first, Shabbington: A Thousand Years of Village History was published in 2015 and explores the Buckinghamshire village where he and his late wife, Ann, lived for 25 years.

All proceeds will go to Tabernacle and MOMA projects.