Kerry

Gerald of Wales was, among other things, an excellent writer with an extremely high opinion of himself, and the best account of a twelfth-century Welsh church dispute is the one he wrote about his own.

In 1176 the church at Kerry was claimed by both the diocese of St Asaph and the diocese of St David's. Gerald was Archdeacon of Brecon, acting for St David's, and he got there first.

By his own account he had the church door opened, the bells rung and the parish declared for St David's before the Bishop of St Asaph arrived with his own procession. When the bishop came up the hill and attempted to proceed, Gerald excommunicated him, and the bishop excommunicated Gerald back, and the two parties stood in the churchyard cursing each other while the local men — who were, Gerald notes with satisfaction, on his side and armed — looked on.

St David's kept the church. Gerald never became a bishop, which he minded for the rest of his life.

The church

St Michael's is largely medieval, with a double nave, a fifteenth-century roof and a timber-framed bell tower. Given what happened in it, it is a remarkably ordinary and pleasant parish church.

The Ridgeway

The Kerry Ridgeway runs east from here along the watershed for about fifteen miles into Shropshire, and it is one of the oldest routes in the Marches.

It was a drove road, and a good deal older than that: prehistoric burial mounds sit along it, which is the usual sign that a ridge route was in use long before anybody wrote about it. Because it follows the watershed it crosses no rivers, needs no bridges and stays dry, which is exactly why cattle went that way.

It is walkable and rideable end to end and the views north over the Severn valley and south into Radnorshire are the best argument for doing it.

The sheep

The Kerry Hill is a distinct breed, white-faced with black markings round the nose and eyes, developed in this district and recognisable at a distance. It was a common upland sheep across mid Wales and the Marches and is now on the rare breeds watchlist, having been overtaken by more commercially productive types.

Now

A largish village three miles from Newtown, with a school, shops and a pub, in country that rises quickly to the south towards the Ridgeway.