Llanyravon, originally known as 'Croesyceiliog South' was one of the original seven residential neighborhoods planned as part of the building of Cwmbran New Town. The area included Llanyravon Farm, a seventeenth-century gentry house in origin, and Llanyravon Mill. Built in the late eighteenth century, though possibly on a site of a fourteenth-century predecessor, this was located on a mill race branching off the Afon Lwyd. The historic site of Llanfrechfa Grange (containing Llanfrechfa Manor) and its associated gardens and grounds lay just outside the boundary to the east. Throughout the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century there were substantial areas of woodland including Mill Wood and Bath Wood, with the area remaining predominantly in agricultural use up to the designation of the New Town.

Crown Road was identified as the most attractive and visible site in the neighbourhood, commanding ‘magnificent views across to the valley to the west and south-west with Mynydd Maen and Mynydd Henllys creating an exceedingly dramatic background feature’ and with Caerleon Road providing ‘magnificent trees forming a beautiful background and skyline’. It was therefore selected by the CDC as the location for building comparatively higher value rental properties and houses for sale, together with a mix of privately developed properties, ensuring that the existing nature of the area was retained and was developed between 1951 and 1955. An outline planning application for the rest of the neighbourhood was submitted in 1953, by which time it was renamed Llanyravon after the farm and mill.The first contract at Llanyravon for 289 traditional style houses started in October 1956 and on 4 June 1959 Llanyravon was the location for the opening of the CDC’s 3,000th house.

The main Llanyravon unit centre of eight shops and 12 flats was approved in 1957 and built through 1958, opening in January 1959. A new Methodist chapel was built on Llanyravon Way in 1960-61, while Llanyravon Infant & Junior School opened in 1957.

A defining feature of Llanyravon was the provision of the substantial open space defined in the 1951 Master Plan as Llanfrechfa Park.

S Fielding May 2021

Ref: Cwmbran New Town: An urban characterisation study