Welshpool was plain Pool until 1835, when the name changed to set it apart from Poole in Dorset. The town is on the Severn by the English border, and the Smithfield livestock market, the largest one-day sheep market in Europe, runs on Mondays. Off New Street is the Cockpit, an 18th-century brick building where cockfights were held until they were banned in 1849, the only cockpit in Wales still on its original site. By the Montgomery Canal, the Powysland Museum is in a restored warehouse and covers the county’s history. Powis Castle, with its baroque terraced gardens, is just south-west of town, and the narrow-gauge Welshpool & Llanfair Light Railway runs west from Raven Square to Llanfair Caereinion.
