Golden Valley Trip – September 5^th, 2015

Nowadays we often forget how important the Marcher lands were in the history of medieval Wales, and the association of Herefordshire with Owain Glyndŵr and his family can seem quite strange. Yet three of his daughters married Herefordshire squires, and the fourth daughter’s marriage to Edmund Mortimer brought her into the same network. Offa’s Dyke was not the boundary then, and Herefordshire in particular had very strong links of marriage and tradition with its western neighbours.

One need only look at Herefordshire place names to see this demonstrated and the Golden Valley and its surrounding villages are major examples of this. The Valley itself gets its name from a Norman mistranslation Welsh Dwr (Water) became French d’or (gold).

Today we will be visiting some of the sites particularly associated with Owain Glyndŵr. His final resting place is a mystery, as it seems he wanted it to be, but if he does lie hereabouts, then he is still not far from home, and his descendants still remain close at hand – Crofts, Scudamores, Cecils.

SKIRRID INN

Although the Skirrid Inn is best known at the moment for the ghost stories that have gathered round it, and for its gruesome reputation as the place where evil doers and innocents alike were hanged in the stairwell, it does also have a Glyndŵr connection.

Owain himself is said to have rallied his troops here, in the courtyard, before setting off to attack various of Henry IV’s supporters who lived locally.

GROSMONT

The castle here dates back to the 12^th century. It was one of the fortresses known as the Trilateral, along with Skenfrith and White Castle, intended to control the border lands. In March 1405 Grosmont, which had only a small garrison, was attacked by a Welsh force, led by Rhys Gethin, one of Glyndŵr’s leading commanders.

Grosmont Castle

However, Prince Henry, newly appointed to deal with the rising responded too rapidly. He sent reinforcements from Hereford, and on March 11^th the Welshmen were defeated. The prince, writing to his father, estimated that as many as a thousand of them might have been slaughtered, and Owain’s brother-in-law and his secretary were captured and sent to London. This was the first major Welsh defeat.

ABBEY DORE

Although the Cistercians who built Dore Abbey were a foreign religious order, often with ties to a mother house in England, over time they became very much a Welsh organisation, supporting Glyndŵr, not Henry IV. The abbey had acquired lands across Herefordshire; at the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1540s the church itself and much of its land was bought by the Scudamore family, but the building was left to decay until 1633 when Lord Scudamore restored the remaining section.

The nave was lost, as were most of the monks’ quarters. But the chancel, ambulatory and chapels remain. It is said that Scudamore was advised to restore the church so that God would grant him the long-desired heir to his estates; Scudamore duly had his heir – something this fine restoration more than earned.

MONNINGTON STRADDLE

This site is in the parish of Vowchurch. It has been identified in recent years as the place of Glyndŵr’s burial, in a mound near Monnington Court, (a much later building, never the home of Glyndŵr’s daughter and her husband). Various excavations and surveys have taken place at the mound, and it appears that some sort of buried stone structure has been identified by geophysics, but no graves. The mound is often described as a motte, but the RCHAM suggests that it may be a natural feature. In any case, it seems very unlikely that the Welsh leader would have been buried anywhere except in consecrated land.

Glyndŵr is also associated with the nearby Chapel House, where he is said by some to have spent his last days. However the present building is 16^th century. The land belonged to Dore Abbey in the 15^th century and Chapel House could perhaps have been built on the site of an Abbey grange (farm) which would have had a chapel attached for the use of the lay-brothers who did the actual farming.

It is not clear how ancient the tradition about Glyndŵr’s burial here actually is; it could be that the suggestion was made as a means of diverting the enquiries of journalists and others about the grave site. One thing is clear, though – Owain Glyndŵr, like King Arthur, is someone to whom legends and traditions attach themselves.

CANON PYON

One of the earliest, near contemporary references to Owain’s last days (and the only one to give an actual location) states that he died on Lawton’s Hope Hill. Lawton’s Hope itself was part of the estates of the Monningtons of Sarnesfield, and it seems that the manor house there (no longer in existence) was a favourite home of Sir Richard Monnington and his wife, Glyndŵr’s daughter Margaret.

If Owain did, as tradition has it, spend his last years between his daughters’ houses, then Lawton’s Hope lies halfway between Croft Castle and Kentchurch Court. Whether he was en route from one home to another, or whether the ‘Hill’ was added for the benefit of his enemies to make his end seem more miserable, Lawton’s Hope has to be a strong contender for his final home - if not for the site of his grave.

MONNINGTON-ON-WYE

Here too one suspects that the Monnington name has led to confusion. It is possible that Sir Richard Monnington’s ancestors had some connection with the place (his father’s name was Moynton - but the estate had passed from the Giffords to the Audleys, and in Glyndŵr’s day belonged to Thomas Touchet who fought for Henry IV during the rising.)

Despite this, in 1680, when the parish church was being rebuilt, a grave was discovered under a plain stone in the roots of a sycamore tree and this was immediately taken to be that of Owain Glyndŵr. The body crumbled to dust almost at once. The story is very reminiscent of the discovery of the supposed bodies of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere by the monks at Glastonbury, and is clearly yet another example of Glyndŵr’s power to attract stories, sometimes possibly genuine, but often new versions of ancient tales.

Sally Roberts Jones (for the Owain Glyndŵr Society)

GOLDEN VALLEY MAP

KEY

1 The Skirrid Inn 7 Canon Pyon 13 Tretower

2 Campstone Hill 8 Monnington-on-Wye 14 Crickhowell

3 Grosmont 9 Hay-on-Wye 15 Abergavenny

4 Abbey Dore 10 Bronllys 16 White Castle

5 Monnington Straddle 11 Castell Dinas 17 Skenfrith Castle

6 Hereford 12 Cwmdu 18 Kentchurch