In the valleys of Ceredigion lies an increasingly hidden reminder of a hand weaving trade that had all but disappeared everywhere else across Britain. It didn’t start here, as the wool industry predominantly started, surprise surprise, in agricultural areas of the country where the vast majority of the sheep were. In the 17th & 18th century this was first and foremost in East Anglia, such as the flat planes of Norfolk. The weaving industry started there, and with the industrial revolution began to head west towards the Midlands and further afield into Wales. The coal industry headed through the Black Country, and steam power enabled such industries to travel to places previously untouched by the trade. One great benefit of this was that the atmosphere in the valleys and mountainous regions of Britain better suited the yarn. There was nowhere that better proved this than in Talybont, Ceredigion where a small business established itself in the late 1700’s and operated through the generations along the river Leri that passed through this small hamlet just a few miles from the west coast of Wales. The site itself is reputed to have been a smeltery and stamp mill established in the 1640s by Thomas Bushell for processing silver and lead ores, and later there is thought to have been a corn mill on the site. A long line of efforts to harness the flow of the river to generate an industry and thereby income and livelihood for the village itself through the ages.