If Britain fails to protect its heritage we'll have nothing left but ghosts | Simon Jenkins

The Welsh mining settlement of Dylife once thrived but now it lies forgotten, like so much of our industrial past

Fling off the cares of the world this autumn and climb up from the tidy mid-Welsh town of Llanidloes, north over the mountain road towards Machynlleth. Near a wild summit you enter a moonscape of old mineral workings and slag heaps. Here metals were mined in Roman times, and here the Victorians erected reputedly the largest wheel in Britain, the Martha pump, to serve what by the...