Bacheldre (Welsh: Bachelldref or Bachelldre) is a small settlement in Powys, Wales. It is near the A489 road and is 5 kilometres (3 mi) southeast of the town of Montgomery.

The parish of Churchstoke is bisected by Offa's Dyke. Part of the parish lies in England and part of it in Wales, but the Dyke delineates only a segment of the boundary between England and Wales, which boundary also separates the counties of Powys and Shropshire. In this region of the Welsh Marches, there is a significant incursion of Wales east of Offa's Dyke, an area which includes Corndon Hill and the Churchstoke valley. The borderland parish of Church Stoke comprises nine areas, known as townships, one of which is Bacheldre, which lay in the former county of Montgomeryshire.

Bacheldre township runs, in round terms, to some 1500 acres (6.3 km²). It lies wholly to the west of Offa's Dyke. On its eastern side the present English-Welsh border lies some miles to the east. Its northern boundary with the township of Brompton marks the current English-Welsh boundary, while a length of its south-western boundary follows the Kerry Ridgeway, an ancient trackway, which again marks today's English-Welsh boundary, and the whole of the southern boundary marks the boundary between Churchstoke and Mainstone parishes. Part of that boundary is shared with the adjoining township of Castlewright, which lies in Wales. (Again, like its neighbour Churchstoke, Mainstone parish falls partly in England and partly in Wales.) To the west of Bacheldre township lie the townships of Hopton Isaf and Hopton Uchaf.

George Mountford, in his article “Churchstoke and its Townships”, describes Bacheldre township as an area made up of woods, farmland and dwellings, and accounts for its cwms (dingles or valleys) and streams, the land rising towards the southern boundary. He writes “Between Offa’s Dyke on the one hand and Pentrenant on the other stretch 1,000 acres (4 km²) of first-rate agricultural land, divided up into well-known farms as Pentrenant, The Lake, Crow Wood, Bacheldre Hall and Bacheldre Farm”. In his paper, he includes a map of the township boundaries. This is also a map of Churchstoke parish in an article entitled “The Perambulation of the boundaries of Churchstoke Parish”.

Bacheldre is an anglicised placename form of the Welsh language word Bachelldre, meaning in Welsh placename terms ‘a farm on the bend or meander of a stream’, tre(f) denoting home, farmstead, or town(ship). (We note that the Caebutrach stream forms the northern boundary of the township, which is where we find Bachelldre Mill, not far distant from Bachelldre Hall and Bachelldre Farm.) Bachelldre(f) is the older, correct, form of the name, and is the spelling that will be employed below. In older written sources, a variant of the name is found. When the name is preceded by a preposition such as ‘O’ or ‘Yn’ the ‘B’ will mutate to 'F' or ‘M’, so we find ‘o Fachelldref’ ('from.. ') and ‘ym Machelldref’ ('in.. '). (As the ‘b’ may mutate to ‘f’ or 'm', we see too that the ‘t’ of ‘tref’ may mutate to ‘d’; also the last letter of ‘tref’ is not always preserved.)

Bachelldre lay in the manor of Overgorther (Welsh Gorddwr Uchaf, Gorddwr signifying land beyond the water of the River Severn and Uchaf meaning uppermost, or over, as opposed to Nethergorther), under the marcher lordship of Caus / Barony of Caus, which lordship covered an extensive area, embracing Bachelldre at its southern extremity. This Marcher lordship has been described as a semi-autonomous fief, the Corbets of Caus (Welsh Cawrse) having consolidated great tracts of land, as did the Mortimers further to the south, who also had possession of Kerry (Ceri) to the west of Bachelldre. From Tudor times, one of the avenues open to the people of the Welsh Marches for the resolution of disputes, was the Council of Wales, which met at Ludlow. The power of the Lord Marchers to inflict capital punishment was taken away by the Statute of 27th Henry VIII (1536).

For a decade from 1536, Clun (or Clunnesland, meaning the whole district of country through which the River Clun passes from its rise on the north western side of the Clun Forest to its fall into the River Teme below Clungunford) formed part of Montgomeryshire. Bachelldre lay on the fringe of the lordship of Clun, Clun Forest running up to the Kerry Ridgeway (forest denoting a tract of country, often wooded or untilled, lying outside the manor, and regarded as a preserve for hunting). There were associations between the neighbouring areas, as between Clun and Ceri and, for a time, impropriate tithes were payable from Bachelldre to Clun. Further, Gwernygo, to the west of Bachelldre was a grange of Abbey Cwmhir, which lay in the former county of Radnorshire. Again, Hopton Grange, also a possession of Abbey Cwm Hir, but in Churchstoke parish, lay between Bachelldre and Gwernygo (Gwern-y-go(f), meaning Smith's Field). George Mountford, writing early in the last century, observes that it had been the practice for land in Hopton to be let with Bachelldre Hall.

A lively Welsh culture with its bardic tradition flourished in this Welsh borderland, probably up to the mid-16th century. Odes in the Welsh language to families living at Bachelldre were written by a number of bards.