Welsh Journals

SOME CHURCHES AND CASTLES IN GLAMORGAN. By EDWIN SEWARD, F.R.I.B.A., R.C.A. If we turn back to the historical associations of any division or County in Great Britain, we find none possessing more individual interest in the earliest of British history than those of Glamorgan. At Llandaff the bright light of Christianity shone early." In Wales, we may well be proud of the fact that before the day of Augustine and the foundation even of Canterbury, the faith of Christ had reached the shores of Glamorgan, and had been established at Llandaff. There, Dubricius and the Breton Celt Illtyd, the founder of the Chorea Sanctorum," or Church Monastery, at Llantwit Major, had helped to keep alive the true flame of that light. Llandaff's foundation, the earliest apparently in Britain, had its west boundary at the Neath river, and its eastern boundary at the Wye and after about 1,500 years, it remains almost thus to-day. Llantwit Major, in its Celtic inscribings on stone, takes us near to this early period, for the actual building existing at Llandaff is later than they are. Next in importance may be placed the originally wealthy Cistercian Abbey of Margam, endowed by the Welsh Lords of Avan then Neath, founded by De Granville. Hardly inferior to either, and holding a distinguished place of its own, is Ewenny Priory. Founded by the De Londres of Ogmore, and passing later to the Turbervilles of Coity, it had to be hardly less a castle than a Church, for the Blaenau of Morganwg-the unconquered