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BOOK REVIEWS "Atlas of Cistercian Lands in Wales", David H. Williams (1990), Cardiff £ 40.00. Hardback 220 x 275mm, 153 + xv pp., 65 plates including 42 maps and plans; foreword by Sir Clifford Darby, Emeritus Prof. of Geography, Univ. of Cambridge. Those of us, and they will be many, who are familiar with David Williams' works on the Cistercian Order, and in particular on their possessions and activities in Wales, have learnt to expect any major work by him to be of the highest standards of erudition and research. This, his latest work on the subject, is no exception. Designed as a physical description and identification of all the lands of the Order in Wales it does this by both a listing of all the identifiable land holdings and by a schedule of all rights enjoyed with those lands, such as fishing, mining, wreck of sea etc. All the lands are shown on the excellent maps and on the detailed plans of a number of them, which in turn are accompanied in many cases by photographs. The main work, the inventory, is preceded by an introductory essay which is a masterly summary of the background of the Order in Europe as a whole followed by a consideration of their activities in Wales. Plate 1 which is a map of the Order in medieval Europe, supported as it is on its face by both bar and pie charts, is by itself a work of very great interest and illustrates the amount of research which the author has done over the years on his subject over this much wider field. The itinerary is laid out with all sites described in numerical sequence but so arranged that they fall within the consideration of their houses, those being arranged alphabetically. All are readily identifiable both on the ground by OS grid references and on the appropriate maps later in the work. The entry for each house e.g. Llantarnam, Margam etc. is concluded by a list of the economic resources of the house, again with details of the whereabouts of the mills, mines, roads, urban properties etc., along with a list of churches appropriated to that house. Each entry is accompanied by full references. The field worker who comes upon something in his wanderings will from now on have to check whether his "discovery" has already been recorded by Williams in his Atlas, a point which was brought home to the reviewer personally a few moments after he had purchased the work, only to find a photograph of the mill dam which he had hoped, the week before, to be a new find on Bryngwyn Grange! However all hope need not be abandoned as there is still work to be done elsewhere e.g. on the unrecorded earthworks on Tintern's Estavarney Grange near Usk and at the several sites noted by DH as being not yet identified.