Cefn Cul is a hill in the

Fforest Fawr Fforest Fawr (, ) is an extensive upland area in the county of Powys, Wales. Formerly known as the Great Forest of Brecknock in English, it was a royal hunting area for several centuries but is now used primarily for sheep grazing, forestry, wate ...

sector of the

Brecon Beacons National Park Brecon Beacons National Park, officially named Bannau Brycheiniog National Park (), is a National parks of the United Kingdom, national park in Wales. It is named after the Brecon Beacons (), the mountain range at its centre. The national park ...

Powys Powys ( , ) is a Principal areas of Wales, county and Preserved counties of Wales, preserved county in Wales. It borders Gwynedd, Denbighshire, and Wrexham County Borough, Wrexham to the north; the English Ceremonial counties of England, ceremo ...

, southern

Wales Wales ( ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by the Irish Sea to the north and west, England to the England–Wales border, east, the Bristol Channel to the south, and the Celtic ...

. It is a broad north-northeast to south-southwest aligned ridge whose summit reaches a height of 562 m above sea level. The hill is bounded to the west by the upper valley of the

River Tawe The River Tawe (; ) is a long river in South Wales. Its headwaters flow initially east from its source below Llyn y Fan Fawr south of Glasfynydd Forest, Moel Feity in the Black Mountain (range), Black Mountains, the westernmost range of the ...

though which the old

Trecastle Trecastle () ("the town of the castle") is a village in Powys, Wales, situated on the edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park () and in the community of Llywel. The village has a population of about 200. History Trecastle is named after Cast ...

road runs whilst to the east is the pass of Bwlch Bryn-rhudd over which the

A4067 road List of A roads in zone 4 in Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-west coast of continental Europe, consisting of the countries England, Scotland, and Wales. With an area of , it is the ...

runs from the Crai valley south to that of the Tawe.

Geology

Cefn Cul is formed from sandstones and mudstones of the Senni Beds and Brownstones Formations of the

Old Red Sandstone Old Red Sandstone, abbreviated ORS, is an assemblage of rocks in the North Atlantic region largely of Devonian age. It extends in the east across Great Britain, Ireland and Norway, and in the west along the eastern seaboard of North America. It ...

laid down during the

Devonian period The Devonian ( ) is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic era during the Phanerozoic eon, spanning 60.3 million years from the end of the preceding Silurian period at million years ago ( Ma), to the beginning of the succeeding C ...

. Whilst the regional dip of the rock beds is to the south, locally they vary and a broad

anticlinal Anticlinal may refer to: *Anticline, in structural geology, an anticline is a fold that is convex up and has its oldest beds at its core *Anticlinal, in stereochemistry, a torsion angle between 90° to 150°, and –90° to –150°; see Alkane_st ...

structure coincides with the hill. It is within the area designated in 2005 as Fforest Fawr Geopark.

Archaeology

An ancient cairn occurs near the southern end and a

standing stone A menhir (; from Brittonic languages: ''maen'' or ''men'', "stone" and ''hir'' or ''hîr'', "long"), standing stone, orthostat, or lith is a large upright rock (geology), stone, emplaced in the ground by humans, typically dating from the Eur ...

can be found just above the minor road to the west of Cefn Cul. Arguably the principal feature of the hill is the scatter of pillow mounds across its southern spur and over its lower eastern slopes above Cray Reservoir. These were established in the nineteenth century for the production of rabbit fur and meat.Leighton, D.K. 1997 'Mynydd Du and Fforest Fawr' RCAHMW Aberystwyth

Access

The hill is designated as open country so freely accessible to walkers though a series of fences and walls cross the hill and require negotiation without damage.

References

External links

images of Cefn Cul & surrounding area on Geograph website
{{coord, 51.8725, -3.6548, type:mountain_region:GB, display=title Mountains and hills of Powys Black Mountain (range) Fforest Fawr