Welsh Journals

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dence, or in oral tradition. The church's present dedication, to 'Holy Cross', dates only from 1979 when the building was re-hallowed, and recalls the most ancient surviving tangible evidence of the Christian history of the site, the churchyard cross. II There is more co-incidence of architectural and documentary evi- dence for the medieval period. The blocked west doorway has been dated to the thirteenth century, and a church was certainly standing here at that time. 'Kilcorric' in the deanery of Usk is mentioned in the Taxatio Norwic: of 1254, though it was too poor to be assessed. It is omitted from the subsequent Taxatio Ecclesiasticus of Pope Nicholas IV in 1291, almost certainly because, as earlier in the century, it was exempt from taxation, its income being too small for assess- ment.13 It is possible that the church at this time was an unpretentious single-cell building, not unlike Trostrey or Kemeys Commander in the same deanery. Indeed, the theory has been advanced that the single corbel, crudely carved as a human face, which is above the west door- way on the exterior, originally supported the roof-beam of a small porch, similar to that still to be seen at Kemeys Commander.14 The small medieval church seems to have been greatly altered in the century before the English Reformation. The present nave windows, and the south porch, may be of the fifteenth century, though the structure of the porch itself could be earlier. The only extant engraving of the church, published in 1852, illustrates an exterior arched doorway to the porch which looks to be of an earlier date than the fifteenth century.15 However, the smaller Welsh parish churches are difficult to date with precision. The work at Kilgwrrwg which is tentatively dated to the fifteenth century may, in fact, be later. The most substantial farmhouse-and the building which stands closest to the church-Great Kilgwrrwg, was dated by Fox and Raglan to the period c. 1500-1550,16 and it is possible that the rebuilding work at the church is contem- porary with the construction of the house. Church and house remain the most substantial structures in the parish, and definitely the oldest. Of a third, 'a water grist mill called Kilgurrugs Mill', which was mentioned in a post-nuptual settlement of 1662,17 there is now no firm evidence. III It is difficult to realise now that until well into the eighteenth century Kilgwrrwg was at the heart of a Welsh-speaking area. The field and place names of the parish recorded in the seventeenth century deeds among the Beaufort archives are almost all in Welsh,18 and, although they no longer survive, C. J. O. Evans mentioned the remains of a Welsh bible of 1620 kept in the church,19 a mute reminder of the vernacular of the people of Kilgwrrwg. It is from the latter part of the seventeenth century that there survives further evidence relating to the history of the church. The parish is