The Drowned Village

This is a programme about the politics of water. It's also the story of a dark and controversial chapter in Welsh history. In the 1960s, Capel Celyn, a small village in the Tryweryn valley in Wales, was submerged in water, to create a reservoir to supply the city of Liverpool.

Myles Dungan investigates the story of the small Welsh-speaking community who lived there, the ways they protested and acted to try to save their village, and how this event intersects with the Welsh nationalist movement.

In this programme we hear from the following contributors:

Betsan Powys is a BBC journalist, a former reporter on Panorama, and the current presenter of the Welsh language equivalent of Question Time, Pawb a'i Farn. She is also the producer and presenter of a recent BBC podcast, Drowned, on the flooding in 1965 of the Tryweryn valley and the small Welsh-speaking community of Capel Celyn in North Wales. As well as interviewing dozens of the protagonists, Betsan has also done a thorough archive search to gather material for her series.

Dr. Wyn Thomas is an historian and recording artist. Wyn has produced a number of works on recent Welsh history and politics, including Tryweryn: A New Dawn, a book based on twenty years of research of the documents around the drowning of Capel Celyn, and dozens of interviews with the surviving protagonists. The song we hear by Wyn Thomas is called 'Watch and Smile'.

Emyr Llewelyn Jones was a young student in the 1960s, dismayed at the prospect of the drowning of Capel Celyn. He was determined to organise a protest campaign against the building of the reservoir.

The music for this programme, in Welsh and English, relates to the drowning of Capel Celyn. The individual songs are listed below.

Enya – Dan y Dŵr

Gwenno – Tryweryn

Manic Street Preachers – Ready for Drowning

Catrin Finch and Cimarron – Tryweryn

Tystion – Tryweryn