1. Felincamlais lies in the upper reaches of Cwm Camlais-fawr, a tributary of the Usk. Appearing in records of the Penpont Estate (1) is a reference to `the erection of a water grist mill on the river Camlais Vawre? in a covenant dated 1612-13. Later references mention milling rights at `Melin ycha ar Camlais? (1671) and `a water corn grist mill in Blaen Camleis? (1673). The Tithe Award map (1843) shows `Abercamlais Mill? at the given NGR, seemingly in operation, and with a faint broken line to the mill from a point on the river close to a nearby ford suggesting the course of a leat. The OS first-edition 25-inch map (1870s) does not specifically refer to a mill here or indicate a leat; it appears therefore to have gone out of use between 1843 and 1870, or thereabouts.
The mill lay to the immediate south-east of Blaen-Camlais farm. It lay also about 400m SSW of a castle mound (NPRN 305059), but it is not known if this mill had a medieval antecedent. Although located within the Great Forest it is not listed amongst the demesne mills known to have been established there by the fourteenth century (2). The 1671 reference to `Melin ycha? may imply the presence also of a `Melin isa? the location of which is presently unknown.

2. Felincamlais is an occupied farmhouse, the former mill on the south gable used for storing farm machinery but now derelict. When visited no obvious water control system was seen. A nearby waterfall may have been the location of one end of a wooden trough which carried water to an overshot wheel on the gable wall of the mill. The external appearance of the `miller's house' suggests a nineteenth century rebuild, or significant alteration, perhaps coinciding with the site's change of use.

(1) Penpont Estate, Schedule of Deeds and Documents (2 vols., 1936 & 1975), National Library of Wales.
(2) R.R.Davies, The Bohun & Lancaster Lordships in Wales in the Fourteenth & Early Fifteenth Centuries. Univ.of Oxford doctoral thesis, 1965 (NLW).

David Leighton, RCAHMW, 14 March 2011