This part of the country, however, is completely secluded. There never was, so far as we know, a public conveyance between Rhaiadyr and Builth; and at the latter town, at this season of the year—although it is still early in October—the traveller will find no means of communication with the rest of the world, except for those who journey with post horses, and those who make use of the locomotive powers of their own limbs.
Builth is finely situated, its narrow streets rising in irregular terraces on the side of a hill on the right bank of the Wye. The houses are as Welsh as can be, and have a primitive, old world look, that has a great charm in our eyes. The town is approached by a stone bridge of considerable length; at the end of which, on the left hand, are some mounds of grass and ivy, which conceal the remains of a castle supposed to date from the eleventh century. All, however, is conjecture as regards this castle, which was a small fortress, with a keep of forty yards in circumference, surrounded by a ditch, and defended towards the south by two trenches. It was repaired in 1209, by Gilbert, Earl of Gloucester; after the death of Llewellin, it became an English fortress; and in 1690, was accidentally destroyed by a fire, which at the same time consumed the greater part of the town. Builth, however, is older than its castle. It is set down by the learned as the Bullæum Silurum of the Romans; and various druidical remains in the neighbourhood carry back the ken of the antiquarian to a still more remote epoch, which is lost in shadows.
It was in this neighbourhood, as we have said, that Llewellin, the last of the Welsh princes, was defeated and slain in 1282. Tradition relates, that while at Aberedw, a short distance down the river, on the opposite bank, he was surprised by the English, and escaped so narrowly, that he had only just time to pass the drawbridge of Builth, before his pursuers came up. The English, however, succeeded in cutting him off from his army, by getting between the town and a village on the right bank of the Wye where it was posted. Llewellin, upon this, attempted to conceal himself in the woods, but he was discovered, and beheaded, and his body buried at a place called Cern y Bedd.