Bryntail Lead Mine, a Guardianship Monument in the care of Cadw, was worked between the late eighteenth century up to the late 1860s, producing lead ore and barytes. Visible workings are largely of nineteenth century date and include three main shafts and a deep adit, well-preserved remains of an earthwork incline, tramway track beds, a leat which once carried water drawn from the Clywedog further upstream, substantial remains of buildings including structures which housed pumping and winding machinery.

The barytes mill includes massive Yorkshire stone slab tanks. Other surviving features include the mine office, smithy and store building, a circular explosives magazine, together with wheelpits for winding and crushing machinery, ore bins, roasting ovens and precipitation tanks, jigger placements, a washing and picking floor area, buddles, slime pits. A wheelpit close to the river is 60 feet (18.23 metres) deep.

Claire Parry, RCAHMW, 6 June 2011.

SOURCES:
Clwyd-Powys Archaeological Trust report: Historic Landscape Characterisation - The Clywedog Valley: Manledd Trefeglwys, Llanidloes Without and Llanidloes communities, Powys.

Association for Industrial Archaeology: A Guide to the Industrial Archaeology of Mid-Wales, 1984