Maybe it’s relevant, maybe it’s not, but there are a number of distinctive conical hills near Old Radnor: Stanner Rocks, Worsell Wood, Hanter Hill. Apparently these contain some of the oldest rocks in Wales – Precambrian and 700 million years old. Old Radnor was called ‘Pen-y-Graig’: ‘head of the rock’. The geology means Stanner Rocks supports some pretty strange and rare plants, and it was said: “by the common people it is called the Devil’s Garden.” You can’t help wondering where the stones for the local monuments came from. Probably.
“The Cambrian Balnea: Or Guide to the Watering Places of Wales, Marine and Inland” by Thomas Jeffery Llewelyn Prichard (1825).