Abbeycwmhir

Cwm hir means the long valley, and it is: a narrow trough running east from the Radnorshire uplands with a brook down the middle and steep sides.

The Cistercians founded here in 1176 under the patronage of Cadwallon ap Madog, a Welsh lord of Maelienydd, and the village exists because the abbey did.

The abbey

The monks laid out a church with a nave of fourteen bays, longer than any other in Wales and longer than most English cathedrals of the period. They never finished it.

The foundations are pegged out in mown grass and standing at the west end looking east is the whole point of a visit. There is more information on the abbey's own page.

Llywelyn ap Gruffudd is traditionally said to have been buried here after his death near Builth in 1282, and a granite slab placed on the site in 1978 has become a place of pilgrimage. Flowers appear on it, particularly in December.

The village

Small, scattered, and almost entirely the product of the nineteenth century. The parish church of St Mary was built in 1680 and rebuilt in 1866, and it holds some material from the abbey.

Abbey-Cwmhir Hall is Victorian Gothic of 1833 and later, privately owned, with more than fifty rooms and a garden that opens under the National Garden Scheme and occasionally otherwise. It is an unexpected thing to find at the end of a Radnorshire lane.

Getting there

North-east of Rhayader on minor roads, and easy to drive past the turning. Glyndŵr's Way passes close, which is the better way to arrive.

There is no shop, no pub as such and very little parking. It is quiet, which given what the Cistercians were after is more or less as intended.