Breconshire
Breconshire was a mountainous border county of isolated farmsteads and villages into which the unfranchised iron town of Merthyr Tydfil extended at Cefn-Coed-y-Cymer. Administratively it comprised six hundreds: Builth, Crickhowell, Defynnog, Merthyr, Pencelli and Talgarth, and its market towns were Brecon, Builth, Crickhowell and Hay.Parl. Gazetteer of England and Wales (1844), i. 260, 261. The representation was controlled by the largest landowners, who were absentees and Tory in sympathy.