buildings were erected at a cost of about £10,000 in 1862, and these were enlarged at a cost of about £5000 in 1880. The chancel of the old Dominican chapel, dating from the 13th century, was restored in 1864, and is now the school chapel. There is also a Congregationalist theological college, built in 1869 at a cost of £12,000, and now affiliated with the university of Wales. The other chief buildings of the town are the shire hall built in 1842 in the Doric style from designs by T. H. Wyatt; the Guildhall; the barracks, which are the headquarters of two battalions of the South Wales Borderers; the county infirmary founded in 1832; and the prison (in Llanfaes) for the counties of Brecon and Radnor. There is a bronze statue of the duke of Wellington (erected in 1854) by John Evan Thomas, a native of the town. The town commands a magnificent view of the Brecknock Beacons, and is noted for its promenades on the banks of the Usk, and in the priory groves. Brecon is favourably known as a fishing centre, and there is also boating on the Usk and the canal. There are several houses of interest, notably the Priory and Dr Awbrey’s residence (now called Buckingham House), both built about the middle of the 16th century, but the finest specimen is Newton (about a mile out, near Llanfaes) built in 1582 by Sir John Games (a descendant of Sir David Gam), but now a farmhouse. The “Shoulder of Mutton” Inn, now known as the “Siddons Wine Vaults,” was the birthplace in 1755 of Mrs Siddons.
The name Brecknock is an anglicized form of Brycheiniog, the Welsh name of the territory of Brychan (whence the alternative form of Brecon), a Goidelic chieftain, who gained possession of the Usk valley in the 5th century. The Welsh name of the town, on the other hand, has always been Aber-Honddu (the estuary of the Honddu). There is no evidence of any settlement on the site of the present town prior to about 1092, when Bernard Newmarch, after defeating Bleddin ab Maenarch, built here a castle which he made his residence and the chief stronghold of his new lordship. For this purpose he utilized what remained of the materials of the Roman fort, 3 m. to the west, at Y Gaer, which some identify as Bannium. He subsequently founded, near the castle, the Benedictine priory of St John, which he endowed and constituted a cell of Battle Abbey. In time a town grew up outside the castle, and its inhabitants received a series of charters from the de Bohuns, into which family the castle and lordship passed, the earliest recorded charter being granted by Humphrey, 3rd earl of Hereford. Under the patronage of his great-grandson, the last earl of Hereford (who lived in great splendour at the castle), the town became one of the chief centres of trade in South Wales, and a sixteen days’ fair, which he granted, still survives as a hiring fair held in November. Further charters were granted by Henry IV. (who married Hereford’s co-heiress), by Henry V., who gave the town two more fairs, and by the Stafford family, to which the castle and lordship were allotted on the partition of the Bohun estates in 1421. Henry Stafford, 2nd duke of Buckingham, resided a good deal at the castle, and Morton, bishop of Ely, whose custody as a prisoner was entrusted to him, plotted with him there for the dethronement of Richard III., for which Stafford was executed in 1483. His son, Edward, the 3rd duke, who was born in the castle in 1478, had the estates restored to him, but, in 1521, suffered a like fate with his father, and the lordship and castle then vested in the crown. Both were acquired in the next century by the ancestors of Viscount Tredegar, to whom they now belong. By a statute of 1535 Brecon was made the county town of the new shire of Brecknock, and was granted the right of electing one burgess to represent it in parliament, a right which it retained till it was merged in the county representation in 1885. A chancery and exchequer for the counties of Brecknock and Radnor were also established at Brecon Castle, and from 1542 till 1830 the great sessions, and since then the assizes, and at all times the quarter sessions for the county, have been held at Brecon. The borough had also a separate court of quarter sessions till 1835. The town was incorporated by a charter granted by Philip and Mary in 1556 and confirmed by Elizabeth in the nineteenth year of her reign. A charter granted by James II. was never acted upon. The borough was placed under the Municipal Corporations Act 1835, and until then the town of Llywel, which is 10 m. off, formed a ward of the borough. There were formerly five trade gilds in the town, the chief industries being cloth and leather manufactures. There are five ancient fairs for stock, and formerly each of them was preceded by a leather fair. The fairs held in May and November were also for hiring, much of the hiring being now done at the Guildhall, and not in the streets as used to be the case.
During the Civil War the greater part of the castle and of the town walls (which with their four gates were until then well preserved) were demolished by the inhabitants in order to prevent the town being either garrisoned or besieged. Charles I., however, stayed a night at the priory house shortly after the battle of Naseby. The chief ruins of the castle are now enclosed in the grounds of the Castle Hotel, the principal object being Ely tower, where Bishop Morton was imprisoned.
Besides those already mentioned the persons of note born in the town include Henry Stafford, duke of Buckingham; Dr Hugh Price, founder of Jesus College, Oxford; Dr Thomas Coke, the first Wesleyan missionary bishop in America; and Theophilus Jones, the historian of the county. Henry Vaughan, the Silurist, at one time practised here as a doctor of medicine. (D. Ll. T.)
BRECONSHIRE, or Brecknockshire, an inland county in South Wales, and the fourth largest in all Wales, bounded N.W. by Cardigan, N. and N.E. by Radnor, E. and S.E. by Monmouth, S. by Glamorgan and W. by Carmarthen. The general aspect of the county is mountainous, and the scenery is marked by beauty and grandeur. The climate is moist but temperate and healthy, and the soil of the valleys, often consisting of rich alluvial deposits, is very fertile. The loftiest mountains in South Wales, extending from Herefordshire and Monmouthshire (where their eastern spurs form the Hatteral Hills) in a south-easterly direction into Carmarthenshire, completely encircle the county on the east and south except for the break formed by the Vale of Usk at Crickhowell. Their highest summit north of the Usk, on the eastern side, where they are known as the Black Mountains, or sometimes the Black Forest Mountains, is Pen y Gader (2624 ft.) between Talgarth and Llanthony, and on the south-west the twin peaks of the Mynydd Du (“Black Mountain”) or the so-called Carmarthenshire Vans or Beacons, only the higher of which, Fan Brycheiniog (2632 ft.), is, however, in Breconshire; while the centre of the crescent is occupied by the masses of the Brecknockshire Beacons or Vans (often called the Beacons simply), the highest point of which, Pen y Fan, formerly also known as Cadair Arthur, or Arthur’s Chair, attains an altitude of 2910 ft. In the north, a range of barren hills, which goes by the general designation of Mynydd Eppynt (a name more properly limited to its central portion), stretches right across the county in a north-easterly direction, beginning with Mynydd Bwlch-y-Groes on the boundary to the east of Llandovery, and terminating near Builth. In the dreary country still farther north there is a series of rounded hills covered with peat and mosses, the chief feature being Drygarn Fawr (2115 ft.) on the confines of Cardiganshire.
Of the valleys, the most distinguished for beauty is that of the Usk, stretching from east to west and dividing the county into two nearly equal portions. The Wye is the chief river, and forms the boundary between the county and Radnorshire on the north and north-east, from Rhayader to Hay, a distance of upwards of 20 m.; its tributary, the Elan, till it receives the Claerwen, and then the latter river, continue the boundary between the two counties on the north, while the Towy separates the county from Cardigan on the north-west. The hilly country to the north of the Eppynt is mainly drained by the Irfon, which falls into the Wye near Builth. The Usk rises in the Carmarthenshire Van on the west, and flowing in a direction nearly due east through the centre of the county, collects the water from the range of the Beacons in the south, and from the Eppynt range in the north by means of numerous smaller streams, of which the Tarell and the Honddu (which join it at Brecon) are the most important, and it enters Monmouthshire near Abergavenny.
