Letter: Grievous loss

From William Rees, Penarth

SIR,—The proposal for the ultimate demolition of the Great House Farm, Llandough, would unwittingly erase from memory one of the early historical sites of Glamorgan, marking, as it does, the location of the ancient Celtic monastery, a centre of first importance in the rise of Christianity in Morgannwg, comparable, indeed, in early record with the two other great Celtic monasteries of St. Cadoc at Llancarfan and of St. Illtyd at Llantwit Major.

It may be difficult for us today to envisage this one-time monastic centre of St. Dochwy, or Docunnus, in its heyday as a great collegiate institution, with its abbots — some of whose names are fully authenticated — presiding over a large community of disciples, the whole serving as an important missionising centre for the early Christianisation of our region.

This missionary movement was to continue until the Norman conquest of Glamorgan, when the monastery with its lands, church dues and other of its property was vested by the Lord of Glamorgan in the Benedictine Abbey of Tewkesbury, the church services thereafter being conducted, within the Romanised order, as the Church of the Parish of Llandough, its revenues being regularly collected for transmission to the abbey.

Llandough remained appropriated to Tewkesbury until the abbey itself, with all its property, fell into the hands of the Crown at the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII in the years 1536-39. The site at Llandough, thus secularised, was sold in 1545 to Sir George Herbert, of Swansea, to form the Manor of Llandough, to remain in the possession of the Herbert family until purchased in 1793 by Lord Bute, the farmstead of Great House, or Ty Mawr, which still embodies some of its earlier features, serving as the manorhouse of Llandough.

The entire site, therefore, and the church adjoining, with its ancient Celtic cross still in situ, the sole relic of the ancient monastery, enshrines one of the most interesting of the religious sites of early Morgannwg. Its passing would imply the abandonment of another of the early monuments of Wales, signifying a grievous loss to the tradition of our Welsh heritage.

WILLIAM REES. Penarth.