Welcome to the Llanthony Valley!
When you are here in Castaway, you sit in a very unusual location. There is nowhere else quite like it on the Welsh Borders. It has its very own Spirit of Place, and a fascinating story.
For over nine hundred years, this Romantic landscape of the Llanthony Valley in Black Mountains has consistently drawn in unusual people. From powerful Marcher Lords and religious foundations, to a chain of famous painters, writers, poets, and artists. Modern times have also seen the series of well known musicians, film makers, photographers, and even more writers.
This unique Valley seems to have exerted a very special pull on this complete range of creative talent.
To attempt to explain all this, the local Llanthony Valley History Group has collaborated on the production of a special book, “The Llanthony Valley – A Borderland”.
A copy of the book is here at Castaway for you to read into during your stay. And further copies are available from the Bar in nearby Llanthony Abbey itself, or from the Skirrid Mountain Garage in Llanfihangel Crucorney, as you leave the main road and first drive up in to the Valley.
The extracts below are based on the story it tells in a brief précis which helps set the scene:
The Llanthony Valley – A Borderland
The Llanthony Valley lies in the heart of the Black Mountains which span the border between England and Wales. Well-known for the romantic ruins of the Augustinian priory from which it takes its name, it has been visited by tourists and artists since the late 18th century. During the Middle Ages, it was a borderland, fought over for centuries.
The Llanthony Valley, also known as the Vale of Ewyas, is the largest of the Black Mountains valleys. These form the eastern edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park. The Black Mountains are predominantly formed from Old Red Sandstone laid down some 400 million years ago. Later the landscape was shaped by the ice of successive glaciations in the last million years, which gradually eroded the valleys.
The Llanthony Valley has a unique sense of place. In the late eleventh century William de Lacy, a Norman Lord, was so moved by a ruined chapel of St David at Llanthony, that he became a hermit and inspired the founding of the Llanthony Abbey.
The frontier between the England and Wales had been relatively stable since the 700s, but late in the eleventh century, soon after the Norman Conquest, Norman barons began to advance into Wales. Their conquests became a frontier region outside royal authority, known as the March.
By the late 1200’s, formal take over by King Edward 1st left Wales subject to legal and economic control. Then, following the deposition of Richard II by his cousin Henry IV in 1399, a new rebellion broke out. This coalesced around the inspirational Owain Glyn Dwr. The revolt was partially civil war, but Glyn Dwr, who declared himself Prince of Wales, attracted strong popular support. But the area around Llanthony was devastated. And by 1480, the abbey community had moved off to the shelter of their sister house in Gloucester. Llanthony went into further decline, and was finally suppressed by Henry V111 during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530’s. Its lands sold off to private owners to become part of the Llanthony Estate.
Over the last two hundred and fifty years in particular, people began to find beauty in wild country, and artists began to find their own inspiration in the valley – more perhaps than anywhere else in Wales.
Before the early eighteenth century, hardly anyone travelled for pleasure. The few who wrote about their experiences were horrified by upland Wales – by its bad roads, miserable inns, poor food, incomprehensible language and terrible weather. But by the 1750s, attitudes were changing. People saw pleasing qualities in nature, admiring landscapes they felt to be ‘picturesque’ and reminded them of paintings by Claude Lorrain or Salvator Rosa. Antiquarians also started to rediscover the history and culture of Wales, and were fascinated by the ruined castles and abbeys that recalled its medieval past.
“These ruins derive a peculiar beauty from their situation in the deep Vale of Ewias… Fertile in corn and pasture, occasionally tufted with trees… it is wholly encircled by an amphitheatre of bleak and lofty mountains.”
– Archdeacon William Coxe, ‘An Historical Tour in Monmouthshire’ – 1801
Turner first came to paint the Abbey in 1792, and the antquarian, Sir Richard Colt Hoare, was here when its ruined west window fell in 1808!
By 1807, the Llanthony Estate had ended up in the hands of Walter Savage Landor. A poet and essayist, Landor had made his name with a verse romance Gebir, which was admired by visitors like Wordsworth and Shelley. Quarrelsome, headstrong and romantic, he fell in love with Llanthony and sold properties in Warwickshire and Staffordshire to buy the Estate. He began to build a new house at the Siarpal (you can see its ruins on the farm still), planting thousands of sweet chestnuts, cedars and larches, and introducing Spanish merino sheep. In a letter of 1812, Landor described the pleasures of country life here, writing:
“Homeward I turn; o’er Hatterils rocks
broke out
Where alders mourned their fruitless bed
Ten thousand ceders raise their head
And from Segovia’s hills remote
My sheep enrich my neighbours cote”
The famous sculptor, engraver, and letter cutter Eric Gill arrived in 1924. He designed world renowned type faces like Perpetua and Gill Sans, at the monastery in Capel y Ffin.
It is still in use today – just look at the BBC logo on your telly anytime! His disciple, David Jones, the Welsh artist and poet, also came with him.
In modern times, the continuing tradition of the Romantic landscape still brings in the creatives, from War Artists like Eric Ravillious and John Piper, to Edward Burra; and to musicians like Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin.
Even the American Beat poet, Allen Ginsberg, reputedly took LSD on the mountain above Capel y ffin during the Swinging Sixties! He was moved to write the following poem as a result. He called it a poem on the sublime, in the Romantic tradition of Wordsworth!
Wales Visitation
“Heavens breath and my own symmetric
Airs wavering thru antlered green fern
Drawn in my navel, same breath as breathes thru
Capel-Y-Finn, Sounds of Aleph and Aum
Through forests of gristle,
My skull and Lord Herefords Knob equal,
All Albion one.”
So do please enjoy our Llanthony Valley and its Spirit of Place, whilst you are here with us at Castaway!
Bryony x
Special thanks to Douglas Wright – for helping me write this Blog and for providing this photograph of our beautiful Valley
to Oliver Fairclough – author of The Llanthony Valley – A Borderland
and to the Llanthony Valley and District History group