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Staylittle (Welsh: Penffordd lâs) is a small village on the B4518 in the county of Powys, Wales.

Geography
Staylittle is set in the shallow upland basin of the River Clywedog to the north-west of Llanidloes, Powys.

History
Staylittle first school was opened in January 1874. It seems that among the adults of the area there was a thirst for education for among those who attended the day school was a married woman of whom it was reported-

'She accepted of a husband when she had the chance, and she does the same with education. No one can deny but that she had gone to school sooner had there been one in reach.'

Several men also attended the evening school including a number of married men. It does seem, however, that several children did not attend. Prominent among the reasons their parents proffered for this was their inability to provide suitable clothes for their children to attend in. One parent justified his children's lack of attendance by informing the School Board that-

'...he had five children between the ages of six and twelve years, that he was too poor to properly clothe any of them so as to be fit to appear in society, and besides he could not spare any of them. He occupied a few acres of land, kept a cow or two, and the fences were imperfect, and he wanted the children to take care of them and to keep the sheep and cattle of his neighbours off the land. He was himself bound to go from home to gather food for them. As a rule the family was supplied with bread by appealing to the benevolence of the neighbouring farmers for corn. The clothes, or rather rags, that covered the kids came from a similar source. He had never been able to find anyone of them with a new suit of clothes at once; consequently not one of them had ever been to Sunday School, although there is one kept at a cottage in the immediate vicinity. Not one of them had ever attended a place of worship from the time of their birth and he most emphatically declared that, unless he was allowed to keep his children in his own way, without at all being interfered with, he would be bound to become a pauper at once. He could not even promise to send one to school under present circumstances, although he admitted that it would be well if the the children were educated.'

Others 'desired leave for their children to attend every other week, their services being required to nurse baby, or a sick mother'.

Migration
Though Staylittle was not a mining town it owed some of its population growth to the importance of lead mining in the area. From 1851 its population grew steadily if not spectacularly with people migrating from out of the area to work in the nearby mines of Dylife and Dyfngwn. After 1881 with the decline of lead mining the population of the parish Trefeglwys in which Staylittle is found declined rapidly dropping by over 30% in the course of 20 years. Many of the men who left the area did so to find work in the South Wales coalfields.