Welsh Journals

being sent to Beta Analytic Radiocarbon Dating laboratory. This study has shown that the peat on Cefn Hirgoed began to develop in either the twelfth or thirteenth century. It would also appear that the main episode of rapid peat development on Cefn Hirgoed lasted for less than two or three hundred years, after which the moorland may have reached its present condition. In many parts of the Welsh uplands such blanket peat is assumed and in some instances attested, to have formed in the prehistoric period. The pollen evidence shows that Cefn Hirgoed had been, in part at least, covered by a mixed woodland of birch, hazel and alder, before the onset of peat development. This woodland cover had, however, been substantially reduced by the time the first peat appeared. The name Cefn Hirgoed ('ridge of the long wood') is inexplicable in the present tree-less landscape. The evidence for the removal of this woodland by the fourteenth century serves to confirm, as is often the case with the Welsh place-names of major topographic features, that the name Cefn Hirgoed was established at an early stage. The woodland lay within the Welshry (Coety Wallia) of the Turberville Lordship of Coety, whose demesne centre lay within 1.6 km of the ridge, and the preference for pastoral farming would have provided the stimulus for its disafforestation. Glamor gan-G went Archaeological Trust Treguff House, Llancarfan, South Glamorgan (ST 0311 7112) Restoration work on the Elizabethan mansion by Mr Andrew Plant in 1995 revealed the remains of a Norman chapel which had been incorporated in the fabric of the building. The chapel consisted of a nave, 10.8m. by 5.3m. inside, and chancel, 5.5m. square, with walls 76 cm. thick. The chancel arch, 1.8m. wide, was constructed of dressed Sutton stone blocks; the round-headed arch springs from imposts chamfered on the underside. The arch is closely paralleled by examples in the parish churches at Wick, Colwinston and St Brides Major, all in the Vale of Glamorgan. In the late medieval period, the chapel was extended by the addition of a storeyed chamber at the west end of the nave. Further drastic alterations occurred in the late sixteenth century when the nave was subdivided into a hall and parlour and an upper floor was inserted. The chancel was largely demolished in the nineteenth century and a lean-to-shed was erected against the present east gable of the mansion.