Welsh Journals

as "easily the most delicate piece of Romanesque architectural design and sculpture in Powys".51 Whilst the last vestiges of Celtic monasticism disappeared with the Norman re- organisation of the Welsh Church something of its spirit lived on in the Cistercians. They lived austere lives in remote places and their values had much in common with the Celtic ideals of the monastic life which appealed to their own traditions of spirituality whilst also commending them to the native population. Their skill at sheep farming would have been recognised by the monks of St Beuno who anticipated them in this monastic activity. Consequently the Cistercian houses of Strata Marcella, founded in 1170, and Valle Crucis, built in 1200 and which superceded Meifod as the main religious centre of the area, in some measure continued and revitalised what had been begun five centuries earlier in the Age of the Saints. 5lR.Haslam, Powys, The Buildings of Wales, (Harmondsworth and Cardiff 1979), p.182.