English: This image is taken by Rupert Allan as part of the Mapping Land Voices project with the National Library of Wales.

There are crofts hidden in the hills of my next-door village in Wales, Pontrhydfendigaid. I didn’t realise this until very recently, when we started listening to the British Library/National Library of Wales sound archives collection. They are, and always have been called, 'crofts', and people belonging to this place are tagged with the suffix 'croftau' (e.g. Twm Croftau).

These landscapes are boggy and hard to navigate. But roads – even tracks – were less important when you consider that everybody had a horse which could graze the mountain grass. Free fast transport for everybody. And Peggy Maesglas says that the roads that the forestry brought in destroyed the communities.