Descriptive Gazetteer Entry for LLANTHONY-ABBEY

LLANTHONY-ABBEY, a chapelry in Cwmyoy parish, Monmouth; on the river Honddu, in the deep mountain vale of Ewias, under the Black mountains, on a tongue of Monmouth projecting between Hereford and Brecon, 4¾ miles NW of Pandy r. station, and 9½ N of Abergavenny. Post town, Abergavenny. The statistics are returned with the parish. The living is a p. curacy in the diocese of Llandaff. Value, £55. Patron, John Morgan, Esq. This part of the vale of Ewias was selected by St. David as the place of his hermitage; and it was thence called Llanddewi-Nant-Honddu, a name which signifies ' ' David's church on the Honddu, ''and came to be corrupted into Llanthony. Drayton, in his "Polyolbion", says,—

Mongst Hatterill's lofty hills that with the clouds are crowned,
The valley Ewias lies immersed so deep and round,
As they below that see the mountains rise so high
Might think the straggling herds were grazing in the sky.
Where in an aged cell with moss and ivy grown,
In which, not to this day, the sun hath ever shone,
The reverend British saint, in zealous ages past,
To contemplation lived and did so truly fast,
As he did only drink what crystal Hodney yields,
And fed upon the leeks he gathered in the fields.

William, a Norman knight, and a retainer and kinsman of Hugh de Lacy, became a recluse at St. David's cell in 1100; Ernisius, chaplain to the Empress Mand, joined him in 1103; and they two founded a Cistertian abbey here in 1108. Henry and Mand soon visited the rising abbey; Walter de Gloucester, Earl of Hereford, and captain of Henry's guards, became an inmate of it; Robert de Betun, afterwards Bishop of Hereford, entered it as a monk in 1130; a party of Welsh, immediately after he became Bishop of Hereford, assailed and desolated it; and, in 1136, with aid from Milo, Earl of Hereford, De Betun founded another monastery of the same name, and in lieu of it, at Gloucester. The original Llanthony abbey, however, continued to be maintained till the Reformation; and it numbered among its priors Geoffrey Henelaw, afterwards Bishop of St. David's, and Henry Dean, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. The property passed through a number of hands after the Reformation; and came eventually to Sir M. Wood, and latterly to Walter Savage Landor, author of ''Imaginary Conversations ''and other works. The church was cruciform, and had a central tower and two W towers. The nave was 172 feet long and 48 wide; the transept was 96 feet long and 36 wide; the choir was 72 feet long and 28 wide; the Lady chapel was 37 feet long and 25 wide; and the central tower was 24 feet each way, and 100 high. There were also an oratory 24 feet long, 11 wide, and 15½ high; and a chapter-house 64 feet long and 26½ wide. The architecture was all of one date, 1108-1136; of pure, silicious, greyish grit-stone, and in transition Norman. The three lower stages of the W towers, the lower stage of the W front between them, the N side of the nave, portions of the transept and of the central tower, part of the choir, all the oratory, the ruined chapter-house, the prior's house, and a fragment of the Earl of Hereford's tomb still remain; and they form, in the aggregate, an imposing and picturesque mass. A portion of the ruins was fitted up, by Sir M. Wood, as a shooting-box; and the prior's house, together with an adjoining tower of the church, was converted into an inn. The person known as Father Ignatins is said to have arranged, toward the close of 1865, for a purchase of the ruins, and of some land around them, with the view of restoring the abbey.


(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))

Linked entities:
Feature Description: "a chapelry"   (ADL Feature Type: "countries, 4th order divisions")
Administrative units: Cwmyoy AP/CP       Monmouthshire AncC
Place: Llanthony

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