‘This is sacred land’: an off-grid Wales community battles to keep their home Legal action has begun to remove the tenants after the 80-acre site was sold to be turned into a healing retreat.
Emma Orbach, another Brithdir Mawr founder, who now lives on land next door, described the situation as “deeply distressing” but backed May and said they would work together.
Their aim, they say, is to “encourage and allow to emerge a nourishing, mature and eco-centric human culture that fosters connection at every level: connection to each other, our human tribe, the land, the earth, those beings other-than-human, our own inner worlds, and the individual purposes and gifts that we bring to the world”.
Members of the co-operative raised £800,000 to try to buy the land but it was sold to May, a teacher, doula and shadow work coach for a sum the community believe was about £1m.
Brithdir Mawr (which could be translated as “large patchwork”, apparently a reference to the mix of soils and landscapes on the farm) was discreetly founded in 1994 and made headlines around the world in 1998 after it was spotted by a survey plane, leading to the residents being described in the press as a “lost tribe”.
