Breidden Hill surrounded in mist - geograph

Snow at Rodney's Pillar (365m) - geograph

Llandreinio Bridge and Rodney's Pillar, 1794

Breidden Hill is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

volcanic hill in

Powys Powys (; ) is a Local government in Wales#Principal areas, county and Preserved counties of Wales, preserved county in Wales. It is named after the Kingdom of Powys which was a Welsh succession of states, successor state, petty kingdom and princi ...

, Wales, near the town of

Welshpool Welshpool ( cy, Y Trallwng) is a market town and community in Powys, Wales, historically in the county of Montgomeryshire. The town is from the Wales–England border and low-lying on the River Severn; its Welsh language name ''Y Trallwng'' m ...

. It is immediately surrounded by the villages of

Trewern Trewern is a small village, community and electoral ward in Montgomeryshire, Powys, Wales. The community includes the villages of Buttington and Middletown, situated 4.5 miles (7 km) northeast of Welshpool, 14.5 miles (23.5 km) west o ...

, Middletown,

Criggion Criggion ( cy, Crugion) is a village in Powys, Wales. Criggion Radio Station was located nearby. A branch of the now defunct Shropshire and Montgomeryshire Railway The Shropshire and Montgomeryshire Light Railway was a railway running from Sh ...

, Crew Green and

Llandrinio Llandrinio is a small village and community in Montgomeryshire, Powys, Wales, close to the Wales-England border. It is situated on the B4393 road which travels from the village of Ford, Shropshire to Lake Vyrnwy. The community, Llandrinio and ...

. The peak of the hill reaches to . Footpaths which lead up to the summit provide excellent 360 degree views over Powys and over the

border Borders are usually defined as geographical boundaries, imposed either by features such as oceans and terrain, or by political entities such as governments, sovereign states, federated states, and other subnational entities. Political borders c ...

with England to the Shropshire Plain. Breidden Hill is one of five peaks with neighbouring Moel y Golfa, which is the highest at , which is a " Marilyn", with a prominence of . The three others are Cefn y Castell (also known as Middletown Hill), Kempsters Hill and Bausley Hill (all over high) with its

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly appl ...

galleried fortification. The five hills are sometimes collectively known as the Breidden Hills, and form a northern extension of the Long Mountain. There are remains of a

British Iron Age The British Iron Age is a conventional name used in the archaeology of Great Britain, referring to the prehistoric and protohistoric phases of the Iron Age culture of the main island and the smaller islands, typically excluding prehistoric Ire ...

hillfort A hillfort is a type of earthwork used as a fortified refuge or defended settlement, located to exploit a rise in elevation for defensive advantage. They are typically European and of the Bronze Age or Iron Age. Some were used in the post-Roma ...

en route which may have been the site of the last stand of

Caractacus Caratacus ( Brythonic ''*Caratācos'', Middle Welsh ''Caratawc''; Welsh ''Caradog''; Breton ''Karadeg''; Greek ''Καράτακος''; variants Latin ''Caractacus'', Greek ''Καρτάκης'') was a 1st-century AD British chieftain of the ...

. Rodney's Pillar at the top was built by the gentlemen of

Montgomeryshire Montgomeryshire, also known as ''Maldwyn'' ( cy, Sir Drefaldwyn meaning "the Shire of Baldwin's town"), is one of thirteen historic counties of Wales, historic counties and a former administrative county of Wales. It is named after its county tow ...

who supplied

oak An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus ''Quercus'' (; Latin "oak tree") of the beech family, Fagaceae. There are approximately 500 extant species of oaks. The common name "oak" also appears in the names of species in related genera, notably ''L ...

wood Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin th ...

from the area and shipped it down the

River Severn , name_etymology = , image = SevernFromCastleCB.JPG , image_size = 288 , image_caption = The river seen from Shrewsbury Castle , map = RiverSevernMap.jpg , map_size = 288 , map_c ...

(which runs nearby at Bausley with Criggion) to

Bristol Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...

where Admiral Rodney's

naval fleet A fleet or naval fleet is a large formation of warships – the largest formation in any navy – controlled by one leader. A fleet at sea is the direct equivalent of an army on land. Purpose In the modern sense, fleets are usually, but not ne ...

was built. Rodney's Pillar is increasingly being used as a navigational aid by helicopter pilots in this area, due to its visibility from large areas of Wales. Beginning around 1789, for many years members of the Breidden Society, founded by John Dovaston (1740–1808), met near Rodney's Pillar for an annual festival of food, drink, poetry, and song; records of their meetings for 1809–15 are preserved at the

Houghton Library Houghton Library, on the south side of Harvard Yard adjacent to Widener Library, is Harvard University's primary repository for rare books and manuscripts. It is part of the Harvard College Library, the library system of Harvard's Faculty of Art ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

(MS Eng 1168). There is a large

quarry A quarry is a type of open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some jurisdictions to reduce their envi ...

on the western and northern sides of Breidden Hill. The rock is a thick gabbroic-dolerite

laccolith A laccolith is a body of intrusive rock with a dome-shaped upper surface and a level base, fed by a conduit from below. A laccolith forms when magma (molten rock) rising through the Earth's crust begins to spread out horizontally, prying ap ...

, which is a source of roadstone.Rawson, P. F. and Brenchley, P. J. (2006) ''The Geology of England and Wales'' Geological Society of London p.63 i
Google Books
/ref> On 27 June 2018, a wildfire broke out on Breidden Hill, destroying an area of grassland close to Rodney's Pillar.

References

External links

BBC Wales feature on the Iron Age hillfortPhotos of Breidden Hill and surrounding area on geograph
{{coord, 52, 43, N, 3, 03, W, display=title, region:GB_type:mountain_source:GNS-enwiki Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Montgomery Hillforts in Powys Mountains and hills of Powys Volcanism of Wales Pre-Holocene volcanism Extinct volcanism Laccoliths

See also

References

Further reading

External links