When Labour used to be competitive in Brecon & Radnor, before 1985, did they have any areas of strength in the bits which remained in Powys other than the Ystradgynlais area? I can't really think of anywhere else in the current constituency which strikes me as a likely Labour stronghold, but I may be missing something, and they were still getting respectable votes in the 1980s and 1990s, which must have been coming from somewhere.
Brecon, which has some large estates especially at its western end, was the main one and is one of those Marches/Mid Wales towns that is not the very tidy place people assume, but there was a degree of residual strength in some of the other towns, especially Presteigne, but also Knighton and (prepare for a surprise) Crickhowell, which hadn't gentrified much back then.
Unfortunately the residual strength in Prestiegne was destroyed by Geoffrey Fourmyle.
