National Wool Museum

The National Wool Museum stands in Drefach Felindre, a village in the Teifi Valley of Carmarthenshire. It occupies Cambrian Mills, a former woollen mill built in 1902 to supply cloth for workers in coal and steel. In 1915 the mill employed a hundred people making flannel for military uniforms. A fire in 1919 caused heavy damage but the mill was rebuilt and continued production until 1965. The site became a national heritage area and opened as a museum in 1976. The museum tells the story of Wales’ woollen industry, which once rivalled coal as the country’s leading trade. A £2 million refit in 2004 added a glass-roofed courtyard and a new gallery for the National Flat Textile collection. Historic machinery remains in place and a raised walkway looks down on textiles still being made at Melin Teifi, the working mill on site. A Research and Collections Centre opened in 2005 with hands-on learning spaces. Visitors walk among original mill rooms and see looms and spinning frames in working order. The glass-roofed courtyard lets daylight fall on displays of Welsh blankets and costumes. From the raised walkway they watch wool being carded and woven at Melin Teifi. The village itself, with its rows of workers’ cottages, adds to the sense of a living industrial past.