Welsh Journals

THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY CROSS, MOUNT, AND THE CHURCH OF SAINT PEDROG, VERWIG1 i. THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY CROSS, MOUNT WHEN I was asked if I would speak today on this old Church of the Holy Cross, I was in a dilemma. I have never been able to make any original research into its history, and local records are absent. I can, therefore, only consider what has been already written, weighing it in the balances of tradition and personal opinion. The age of the present building has been variously estimated. Some would have it that it dates from the fourteenth century, while others maintain that the structure is essentially far older. According to the late Mr. D. Ladd Davies, of Cardigan, writing in 1913,2 this plain, but strangely impressive, little church was built about 1380-that is, round about the same time as the College at St. Davids. Mr. Ladd Davies remarked that whereas the latter had been in ruins for some three hundred years Mount Church remained nearly intact. How anyone could be so sure of the date I do not know-unless he had access to some record or other which we here have not seen. Who was the French historian who said that legends and traditions are, for some purposes, as important as factual history ? I remember one of my tutors at Oxford telling me once, when I had produced an essay for which I had to apologise because I thought its factual basis was not too firm- My dear boy, in history there are no facts Anyway, there has been a long-standing and very strong local tradition that a church has stood on this spot from early times-from that era in Welsh history known as the Age of the Saints. It is possible that tradition is right, and that the original church was indeed a halting-place for pilgrims on their way to Ynys Enlli (Bardsey), and a mortuary chapel where vigil was kept over the bodies of saints who were being taken to Bardsey for their burial. (It may interest you to know that, on a very clear day, Bardsey can be seen from Mount.) It has also been said that, in later centuries, Mount was a halting-place for pilgrims following the coast from the north, on their way to St. Davids. Inside the present church there are only two things which give any indication of age. Addresses given in the respective churches on the occasion of the Society's meeting, 2 July 1955. 2Transactions of the Cardiganshire Antiquarian Society, I, iii, p. 8.