Finding Hay

Once just an unremarkable stretch of country lane, Broad Street came into being as a market place for the Norman castle-town of La Haye in the eleventh century. It has been home or workplace to an eclectic mix of residents and shopkeepers, tradespeople and professionals for the best part of a thousand years. Illustrated with early and recent photographs, prints, paintings and maps, this is the story of one street seen within the wider sweep of history in the borderland booktown of Hay-on-Wye. The narrative is rich in the fine-grained details of everyday life, and peopled with characters from Norman times through to 1980 when Broad street had its first two bookshops.