Elan Village () is a small purpose-built community in

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 ...

, Wales. It was designed by architect Herbert Tudor Buckland as part of

Birmingham Corporation Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...

's scheme to construct a series of water supply

reservoir A reservoir (; ) is an enlarged lake behind a dam, usually built to water storage, store fresh water, often doubling for hydroelectric power generation. Reservoirs are created by controlling a watercourse that drains an existing body of wa ...

s in the

Elan Valley The Elan Valley () is a river valley situated to the west of Rhayader, in Powys, Wales, sometimes known as the "Welsh Lake District". It covers of lake and countryside. The valley contains the Elan Valley Reservoirs and Elan Village, desi ...

between 1892 and 1904. It housed workers and their families responsible for maintaining the scheme's dams and the filtration systems. Elan Village is the only purpose-built

Arts and Crafts The Arts and Crafts movement was an international trend in the Decorative arts, decorative and fine arts that developed earliest and most fully in the British Isles and subsequently spread across the British Empire and to the rest of Europe and ...

model village A model village is a mostly self-contained community, built from the late 18th century onwards by landowners and business magnates to house their workers. "Model" implies an ideal to which other developments could aspire. Although the villages ...

" in Wales. It is served by the

B4518 road The B4518 road is a road in Powys, central Wales, with a total length of . It begins at in Rhayader near the junction of the A470 road and the A44 road and leads eventually to the A470 again at Llanbrynmair at . En route going north from Rhay ...

which runs three miles southwestwards from

Rhayader Rhayader (; ; ) is a market town and community (Wales), community in Powys, Wales, within the Historic counties of Wales, historic county of Radnorshire. The town is from the source of the River Wye on Plynlimon, the highest point of the Cambri ...

to end at the village, though continuing as a minor road to

Caban-coch reservoir The Elan Valley Reservoirs () are a chain of man-made lakes created from damming the Elan and Claerwen rivers within the Elan Valley in Mid Wales. The reservoirs, which were built by the Birmingham Corporation Water Department, provide clean ...

. The road continues over the

Elenydd The Elenydd () is an upland area of Mid Wales, extending across parts of northern and eastern Ceredigion and Powys between Aberystwyth and Rhayader. Elenydd is also a name given to the medieval commote of Cwmwd Deuddwr which covered approximatel ...

to Cwmystwyth and a cul-de-sac branch runs to the dam of Claerwen reservoir.Ordnance Survey 1:25,000 scale Explorer map sheet no 200 ''Llandrindod Wells & Elan Valley'' It is in the

community A community is a social unit (a group of people) with a shared socially-significant characteristic, such as place, set of norms, culture, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given g ...

References

{{authority control Villages in Powys Planned communities in Wales Populated places established in 1892 Rhayader