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The old county of Glamorganshire lost its south-eastern portion to the new County Borough of Newport and the remainder has been divided up into to new the administrative districts of Swansea, Neath Port Talbot, Bridgend, Glamorgan (District), Rhondda-Cynon-Taff, Merthyr Tydfil, Blaenau Gwent, Caerphilly and the City of Cardiff.
Readers of Wild Wales will remember how a burst of sunshine after rain roused old Borrow to rhapsody a mile or two on the right side of the Glamorgan border, “As I looked on the bright luminary I thought of Ab Gwilym’s ode to the sun and Glamorgan, and with breast heaving and with eyes full of tears, I began to repeat parts of it, or rather of a translation made in my happy boyish years.” The “part” that Glamorgan men must like best runs:
“A land I oft from hill that’s high Have gazed upon with raptur’d eye: Where maids are trained in virtue’s school, Where duteous wives spin dainty wool.”No doubt the eulogy is as well deserved now as seventy years ago, and though King Coal has grievously disfigured the fair countenance of Glamorganshire it remains full of charm and interest to those prepared to seek out its beauties.
But Cardiff has little to detain us. The stronghold which Giraldus Cambrensis called the “noble castle of Caerdyf” has given place to an elaborate modern mansion, and only the skeleton of the ancient keep remains as a war memorial of the martial past. That sixteenth-century Baedeker, Leland, records that;
“the towne of Cairtaphe is the principale of all Glamorganshire, is well waulid, and is by estimacion a mile in cumpace. In the waulle be 5 gates . . . . The castelle is in the north-west side of the town waulle, and is a great thing and a strong, but now in sum ruine.”But, with the exception mentioned, all these things have gone, and the only other substantial record of Cardiff’s mediaeval career is the Church of St John’s, with a beautiful Perpendicular tower.
The neighbourhood, however, abounds in places of interest. A few miles north stands the splendid ruin of Caerphilly Castle, a glorious relic of one of the largest fortresses in the country. The picturesque and varied story of the great pile contains a full quota of battles, sieges, celebrations, and what not; to linger over it is a temptation sternly to be resisted. But there is one incident in its career that deserves to be recorded for the light it throws on human nature, and not merely the character of our rude forefathers.
When the castle was captured by Queen Isabella and Mortimer early in the fourteenth century, we are told that “the quantity of live stock, provisions, etc., found within the walls is scarcely to be credited. There are said to have been taken here two thousand fat oxon, twelve thousand cows, twenty-five thousand calves, thirty thousand fat sheep, six hundred draught horses, two thousand fat hogs, besides two hundred beeves, six hundred sheep and one thousand hogs, salted; two hundred tons of French wine, forty tons of cider and home made wines.” Small wonder that the garrison became slightly lethargic towards the close of the siege!
The old city of Llandaff has now become absorbed as a suburb of Cardiff, and its cathedral, which can trace its ancestry to a church founded in the seventh century, is now a medley of work of carious styles with a strong flavour of nineteenth-century renovation and restoration. As might be expected in the circumstances, symmetry is not its strong point, but there are attractive features in the Norman, Early English, and Decorated styles; and considering that the building was a ruin in the sixteenth century and merely a kind of outhouse to a scandalous Italian temple in the eighteenth the wonder if that the nineteenth-century restoration was so successful in recovering and restoring the ancient beauties of the edifice.
The old castle of St Fagan’s has been absorbed into the modern mansion of the same name. St Fagan’s is also famous locally for a stiff action in the Civil War (May 8, 1648) described by the Parliamentary commander, Colonel Horton, in the following terms;
“This day about nine of the clocke it pleased God that wee engaged with them [a ‘ generall conjunction of most able bodied inhabitants of the counties of Pembrook, Carmarthen, and Cardigan, and many of Glamorgan’] at a place called Saint Fagons . . . . and for two hours had a very hot dispute, but at length by God’s mercy they were put to a totall rout, many slaine upon the place, and about three thousand prisoners, great store of armes, and ammunition, and many colours.”The coast between Cardiff and Swansea, though comparatively tame compared with the finest cliff scenery of the country, has much to show of beauty or interest. The visitor to Barry Docks will be surprised to learn that Leland was quite accurate when he said that;
“the passage into Barrey Isle at full se is a flite shot over, as much as the Tamise is above the bridge. At low water, there is a broken causey to go over, or else over the shallow streamlet of Barrey Brook on the sands. The isle is about a mile in cumpace, and hath very good corne, grasse and sum wood. There ys no dwelling in the island, but there is in the middle of it a fair little chapel of St Barrok where muc pilgrimage is usid.”St Donat’s Castle, west of Barry, has had the luck to remain in occupation throughout its career, with the result that a portion of the original Norman fortress and its extensions remains, and has been skilfully combined with sixteenth-century additions to form a very interesting example of the baronial mansion of old Several features of the internal decoration are unusual and remarkable, particularly the Grinling Gibbons carving.
The ancient castle of Dunraven has completely vanished, to the regret of all familiar with its picturesque history. To the usual crop of tales of secret dungeons, mysterious murders, and kidnapped maidens it adds a pleasant variant in an odd story of one of the owners of Dunraven which is related in Grose’s Antiques.
This gentleman, it is to be feared, was greatly addicted to the pastime of wrecking, devices such as displays of lights along the shore being his method of attracting ships to shore. But one day retribution overtook him. Two of his sons rowed out to the Swiscar Rock, forgot to secure their boat properly, and were duly drowned in sight of the house. Unfortunately the spectators included the nurse of the youngest son, who was just able to walk. In her agitation she left her charge unattended for a few moments, during which the young hopeful fell into a tub of whey and was also drowned.
This particular portion of the county is studded with ancient remains, ecclesiastical and otherwise, and there are few such happy hunting-grounds for the archaeologist. Of the churches, facile princes is the church of Ewenny Priory, notable as perhaps the best specimen of pure Norman work in Wales. “So far as it exists as all,” says Freeman, “it exists very nearly as it was originally built, and it consequently shows us what religious edifice raised by invaders in the midst of a half-conquered country was required to be . . . . The western limb formed the parish church; the choir, the presbytery, and the appendages formed the church of the priory . . . . The parish church could not be concealed within the monastic enclosure: the parishioners must have free access without passing through the gateway of the monastery, consequently the whole north side was exposed, while the monastic buildings were attached to the south. The result is that the church itself becomes part of the line of defence, and hence the extent to which it assumes a castellated character.”
But by far the most picturesque ecclesiastical ruin in the county is Neath Abbey, a refreshing oasis of decayed loveliness in a wilderness of modern industrial ugliness.
“Somewhat to the south,” wrote Borrow – and he might be writing to-day – “rose immense stacks of chimneys surrounded by grimy diabolical buildings, in the neighbourhood of which were huge heaps of cinders and black rubbish. From this pandemonium, at the distance of about a quarter of a mile to the south-west, upon a grey meadow, stood, looking darkly grey, a ruin of vast size with window holes, towers, and arches.”This great abbey was founded at the beginning of the twelfth century, and it played no inconsiderable part in history. Here the hapless Edward II sought asylum after his escape from Caerphilly Castle, and the Abbot of Neath was perhaps the first of the great ecclesiastics to bestow his patronage on the enterprise of Henry of Richmond. Little did he think that he was assisting him whom Borrow calls;
"the future father of the terrible man doomed by Providence to plant the abomination of desolation in Neath Abbey and in all the other nests of monkery throughout the land.”For all its “castle” the town of Neath does not invite a close inspection, at any rate by readers of this work, nor can Swansea be described as exactly a beauty spot, though considering its activity in the coal business and its general commercial importance it can rightly claim many good points. But Nature has certainly been exceedingly kind in the surrounding country.
The Vale of Neath is renowned for and wide for its picturesque combination of the beauties of wood and water, and the curious Gower Peninsula has much fine coast and abounds in interest. What makes Gower of such fascination (certainly to a chauvinistic Englishman, or perhaps we should say Belgian) is that it is in Wales and yet not of it. In the far-away days of the first Henry, a colony of Flemings made this remote region their home, and their descendants have ever displayed a most mulish obstinacy in keeping themselves apart and preserving their national characteristics. The modern virtue of “being matey” has never appealed to them, with the result that Welsh names in this peninsula are quite a rarity, and the visitor experiences quite a shock at finding himself in a spot such as that which is called – in the homeliest Anglo-Saxon – Blackhole Gut.
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