Qualla: Cwm Gwaun

Cwm Gwaun: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When Britain switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in September 1752, parliament simply skipped eleven days. Wednesday 2 September was followed by Thursday 14 September, and life moved on. Most communities adjusted within a generation. Cwm Gwaun, a wooded valley in north Pembrokeshire, did not. The 313 people who live here still mark New Year's Day on 13 January - the date the old Julian calendar would have given them, two hundred and seventy years after the rest of the country let it go. They call the celebration Hen Galan, Old New Year, and they celebrate it the way their great-great-grandparents did: with the Dyffryn Arms pub, a Welsh-language song called calennig, a horse skull on a stick called the Mari Llwyd, and an apple charm called a perllan that nobody outside the valley has seen made in any quantity for at least a century.

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Cwm Gwaun: A Glacial Valley

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Companion Guide to Wales describes Cwm Gwaun as one of the most important meltwater channels from the last Ice Age in the entire British Isles. The River Gwaun rises in the Preseli Mountains and carved this valley out as the glaciers retreated, leaving steep wooded sides and ...

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Cwm Gwaun: Hen Galan

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Hen Galan celebration begins the night before, on 12 January, with gathering at the Dyffryn Arms - known locally as Bessie's. The pub is Grade II listed, has been run by Bessie Davies's family since 1845, and was originally called Llwyn Celyn, Holly Bush. In 2015 it appeared ...

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Cwm Gwaun: Bessie's and the Brewery

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Dyffryn Arms is not the only place in the valley to drink. The Gwaun Valley Brewery, a small craft operation at Kilkiffeth Farm, makes beer that finds its way back to Bessie's bar - a closed local loop of grain, hops, and consumption. A small hydroelectric scheme at Pontfaen ...

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Cwm Gwaun: Why It Survived

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Calendar reforms tend to win, because most communities have no particular reason to refuse them. So why did Cwm Gwaun refuse? The valley is steep, wooded, hard to reach by the old roads, and culturally distinct - a pocket of Welsh-language Pembrokeshire surrounded by anglicised l...

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