Our village has, approximately 73 houses and is the home to some 150 or so residents, a Village Community Hall, and a pub which continues to serve the community after, at least, 182 years.
Before the rehousing of families from Llechfaen in the 1950s and 1960s, the history of Groesffordd was the story of The Three Horseshoes Inn public house and the coming of the railway.
The earliest record of a building is in the conveyance and occupation of TUY AR Y GROES FIRDD (roughly translated as The House on the Cross Way) by Magdalen Edward and John Watkin in 1797. In 1830 John Powell granted to Margaret Powell, for £280, “all that dwelling house, brewhouse and blacksmith’s shop known as TUY ARY GROES FFORDD dwelling which several years past has been converted into a Public House and is now commonly called and known by the name of Three Horse Shoes and one part of which said premises John Powell has erected a blacksmith’s shop, Penlice(?) Brewing Kitchen”.
The pub has seen many landlords, including, in 1901, being owned and run by David Powell, the owner of the Brecon Old Brewery (B.O.B. ales).
With only the public house and a couple of cottages the community was serviced in 1864 by the Mid Wales Railway when they built Groesffordd Halt. The halt was the last stop, before Brecon, on a spur line of the GWR Oswestry to Aberystwyth line. The line ran from Moat Lane Junction (just south of Caersws) to Brecon and carried both freight and passengers. Prior to the closure in 1962 (2 years before the notorious Beeching Axe), there were a couple of trains a day that ran the entire 60 mile route stopping at every station and halt on the way, 24 in all.
The coming of the railway effectively killed off the Monmouthshire & Brecon canal which has been opened , in its completed form, in 1812. The canal system previously being a network of small canals in South Wales. Its original purpose was as an industrial corridor bring coal and iron into mid Wales and servicing the small communities along its route. Today it is run by the Canal Trust and is an idyllic way of seing our beautiful countryside.
In the 1950s the village started to resemble the community as we now know it with the building of some 22 houses around the crossroads, these to be occupied, amongst others, by the displaced residents of Llechfaen. In those far off days it even supported a Post Office and local shop; now unfortunately closed. In the 1970s and 1980s the village further expanded with building of a further 32 homes in the Square and Groesffordd Park.
Welcome to our village.
