| Year | Events in Powys | Events in Britain | Events in the world |
| 1837 | A new hot-blast furnace for iron smelting is introduced at Ynyscedwyn | Queen Victoria comes to the throne | Papineau protests against British treatment of French Canadians |
| 1838 | Llanfyllin workhouse is built; Branches of the Chartist movement are set up in Newtown and in Llanidloes | The Public Record Office is established | Britain is involved in a war in Afghanistan |
| 1840 | Mary Tibbott of Llanbrynmair is tried for stealing flannel | The penny post is introduced | Civil war in Colombia breaks out |
| 1845 | Constable Jones is on the beat around Four Crosses | Brunel builds the first propeller-driven steamship | The start of the Irish famine |
| 1847 | Life expectancy in Brecon is estimated at around 30 | Marx and Engels publish The Communist Manifesto | War of the Sonderbund in Switzerland |
| 1849 | The case of Elizabeth Grist of Abermule comes before the Quarter Sessions in Welshpool | Dickens publishes David Copperfield | Britain conquers the Punjab region of northern India |
| 1850 | Orders are made by the magistrates in Breconshire for giving Superintendent Constables a proper uniform | Tennyson becomes poet laureate | The British raid Tendeba in the Gambia region of West Africa |
| 1851 | The 1851 census shows that the population of Welshpool has decreased due to "the removal of flannel manufacture to Newtown" | The Great Exhibition is held in the Crystal Palace in London | War between France and Vietnam begins |
| 1853 | The Duhonw flood causes devastation in the Builth Wells area | The Royal Photographic Society is formed | The Crimean War begins (Britain and France at war with Russia) |
| 1854 | An epidemic of cholera strikes Brecon | The Chartist Movement ends | Further fighting in the Crimea |
| 1855 | Richard Pugh is the blacksmith at Park Street, Newtown | Browning’s Men and Women is published | The explorer Livingstone arrives at Victoria Falls in Africa |
| 1857 | The Radnorshire Constabulary is established | Matrimonial Causes Act establishes divorce courts | The Indian Mutiny (An Indian revolt against British rule in India) |
| 1859 | The Llanidloes and Newtown Railway is opened; Pryce Jones of Newtown starts the world’s first mail order company | Darwin’s Origin of Species is published | The Spanish-Moroccan War breaks out |
| 1860 | The Machynlleth workhouse is opened | The first British horse-drawn passenger trams appear in the streets | Abraham Lincoln becomes President of the United States of America |
| 1861 | The railway comes to Knighton | Death of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's husband | Victor Emmanuel II becomes the first king of a united Italy |
| 1865 | Lead mining begins at Van | Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland is published | End of the American Civil War |
| 1868 | The Montgomeryshire Infirmary opens | Transportation of criminals is ended | Revolution in Venezuela (South America) |
| 1870 | Francis Kilvert, curate of Clyro, starts to keep a diary | Education Act passed | Tientsin Massacre in China |
| 1871 | Free Street railway station | Bank holidays are introduced; Trade unions are legalized | Bismarck becomes the first Chancellor of the newly created Germany |
| 1874 | Robert Jones of Llanfair Caereinion is sent to gaol for 3 months with hard labour for larceny | The Factory Act introduces a maximum 10 hour working day | The French occupy Hanoi in Vietnam |
| 1876 | A teacher at Ynscedwyn Board School records that the school has no lighting | The Elementary Education Act ensured that all children received instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic | Queen Victoria becomes Empress of India |
| 1881 | Construction begins on the first large masonry dam in Britain at Lake Vrynwy | Flogging is banned by the British Navy | The first Boer War is fought in South Africa; Tsar Alexander II is assassinated in Russia |
| 1882 | Snow storms prevent children from attending school at Pantycrai | Maxim patents the machine gun | The British occupy Egypt |
| 1888 | A teacher at Gungrog Road School in Welshpool records that the boys had to produce examples of sewing and knitting for an examination | Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince is published | William II becomes the German emperor |
| 1891 | See our forthcoming project, Powys: A Day in the Life | ||
| 1894 | Caban Coch dam in the Elan Valley is constructed | The Manchester Ship Canal is opened | Nicholas II becomes tsar of Russia; New Zealand is the first country to give women the right to vote |
| 1895 | A teacher at Llangamarch School records that there is no fire at the school during the bitterly cold winter | The National Trust is formed | Jameson raids the Transvaal in South Africa |
| 1899 | A new building for John Beddoes School in Presteigne is opened | School leaving age raised to 12 years | The second Boer War breaks out in South Africa |
| 1900 | A little girl is badly injured as she goes home from Ynscedwyn School over the local railway line | Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim is published | The Boxer rising against foreign presence in China |
| 1901 | The fire brigade in Hay-on-Wye obtain a steam-powered fire pump | Death of Queen Victoria | Romania and Bulgaria clash over mutual claims on Turkish-held Macedonia |