Breidden Hill

Breidden Hill rises steeply above the flatlands of Powys near Welshpool, its slopes framed by the villages of Trewern, Middletown, Criggion, Crew Green and Llandrinio. The summit stands 367 metres high and the paths that climb to it give wide views across Powys and into England’s Shropshire Plain. Five hills nearby form the Breidden Hills group, with Moel y Golfa the highest at 403 metres and Cefn y Castell, Kempsters Hill, Bausley Hill and Breidden Hill all above 240 metres. Bausley Hill carries an Iron Age galleried fort, part of a northern extension of the Long Mountain. The hillfort may have been the last refuge of the British leader Caractacus. Rodney’s Pillar, built by Montgomeryshire gentlemen, marks the top with stone sent down the River Severn to Bristol for Admiral Rodney’s ships. The pillar now helps helicopter pilots find their way across Wales. In the 18th and early 19th centuries the Breidden Society held yearly festivals of food, drink, poetry and song near the pillar; some records survive at Harvard’s Houghton Library. The hill is made of hard green gabbroic-dolerite rock quarried at Criggion on the western slope. The quarry has worked since before 1866, sending crushed stone by rail until 1959 and peaking at 350,000 tonnes a year in 1973. Glacial till covers the low ground between the summits, while the higher crags show Ordovician intrusions and volcanic layers. Walkers reach the top along clear paths and find the remains of the hillfort, Rodney’s Pillar and wide views over the Welsh Marches.