Solva WoollenMill

Solva Woollen Mill has been weaving at Middle Mill, a mile up the Solfach valley from the harbour village of Solva, since 1907 — which makes it the oldest working woollen mill in Pembrokeshire, and one of the last of a kind that once dotted rural Wales. Tom Griffiths built it; the Grime family, Tom and Anna, have owned and run it since 1986, and they still weave on the premises, specialising now in flat-woven flooring — stair runners and rugs in hard-wearing British wool, the sort that outlasts the house. You can watch the looms working, which is the point of visiting a mill rather than a shop: the clatter, the warp and weft, a craft carried on in the same building for over a century. There is a small shop and a tea room by the stream. In a county full of coast and cathedral, it is a quieter, older kind of Welsh thing — wool, water and one family keeping a mill alive.