Brecon Cathedral

Most British cathedrals are medieval foundations that stayed cathedrals. This one is a medieval priory church that was promoted after nine hundred years, and knowing that changes how it reads.

The priory

Bernard de Neufmarché took Brycheiniog in the early 1090s, in the campaign that killed Rhys ap Tewdwr in 1093, and founded a Benedictine priory here dedicated to St John the Evangelist, a cell of Battle Abbey.

It stands on a rise north of the Honddu, above and slightly apart from the town, with the precinct wall and several monastic buildings still round it — which is unusual, because most Welsh monastic precincts were dismantled after the dissolution.

The church is mainly thirteenth and fourteenth century, and the chancel is very good early English work of a quality that would be notable anywhere.

The cathedral

At the dissolution the priory church became the parish church of St John, and it stayed that for nearly four centuries.

In 1923 the Church in Wales, newly disestablished by the Welsh Church Act of 1914, created the diocese of Swansea and Brecon and needed a cathedral. Brecon's priory church was the obvious candidate: large, central to the new diocese, and already impressive.

So the building is doing a job it was not designed for, and the scale is priory scale rather than cathedral scale. It is a considerably better building for it.

What to look for

The cresset stone. A large block hollowed with a grid of cups, each of which held oil and a floating wick. It has thirty cups, which makes it the largest surviving in Britain, and it is a genuinely rare object — a piece of ordinary monastic equipment for lighting a church before candles were affordable in quantity.

The Norman font, with carved beasts and foliage, from the earliest church on the site.

The Havard Chapel, the regimental chapel of the South Wales Borderers and their successors. Colours, memorials and the regimental connection to the town, which has had a garrison since the Romans put cavalry at Y Gaer.

The precinct. The tithe barn houses a heritage centre, and the surrounding buildings give a better sense of a monastic layout than almost anywhere else in Powys.

Visiting

Free, open daily, with a café in the precinct and a shop. It is a working cathedral.

It is up its own hill north of the Honddu and the walk from the town centre takes about ten minutes and is steeper than it looks.

Y Gaer, the Roman fort, is two and a half miles west, and Pen y Crug hillfort is above the town.