Llanilltud

It is difficult to imagine that Llanilltud Fawr was in the late fifth and early sixth centuries probably host to one of Britain’s earliest centres of learning. It is also difficult to believe that a scholarly and critical in-depth study of such an important site has not been attempted before. This book has now plugged that gap splendidly.

THE MOST REVD DR BARRY MORGAN,

ARCHBISHOP OF WALES 2003–2017

Philip Morris takes us on a pilgrimage through the ages and generations of Llanilltud, using sound scholarship, careful research and a deep understanding of Celtic tradition. Crucially, by applying this pragmatically to popular traditions of Illtud’s legacy, he reveals a deeper and more authentic inheritance, which informs the pilgrim journey of today.

The Revd Canon Edwin Counsell,

RECTOR OF LLANTWIT MAJOR

Llanilltud

The story of a Celtic Christian community

Philip Morris

For my wife, Sheila, with love and thanks for all your support over the years.

First impression: 2020

© Copyright Philip Morris and Y Lolfa Cyf., 2020

The contents of this book are subject to copyright, and may not be reproduced by any means, mechanical or electronic, without the prior, written consent of the publishers.

The publishers wish to acknowledge the support of the Books Council of Wales

Cover photograph: Philip Morris

Cover design: Philip Morris & Y Lolfa

All plans, maps and photographs

© copyright Philip Morris unless otherwise stated

ISBN: 978-1-78461-965-7

Published and printed in Wales on paper from well-maintained forests by

Y Lolfa Cyf., Talybont, Ceredigion SY24 5HE

website www.ylolfa.com

e-mail [email protected]

tel 01970 832 304

fax 832 782

Foreword

The Most Revd Barry Morgan

Archbishop of Wales 2003–2017

It is difficult to imagine now that Llanilltud Fawr was in the late fifth and early sixth centuries probably host to one of Britain’s earliest centres of learning. It contained a school for young children and a training college for clergy and missionaries as well as being a monastery, all on one site, and was presided over by a man called Illtud, known for his love of the Scriptures and deep spirituality. It is also difficult to believe that a scholarly and critical in-depth study of such an important site has not been attempted before. This book by the Venerable Philip Morris – who has both lived and worked in the town as a priest and who was later to become the Archdeacon of Margam, with oversight of this area – has now plugged that gap splendidly. The modest subtitle ‘The story of a Celtic Christian community’ underplays the range of this book. It actually tells the story of this community from Neolithic and Iron Age times; its origins as a Christian community before Illtud’s arrival; the community under Illtud and those who were his students; gives an account of what happened under the Vikings and then the Normans; goes on to recount the huge changes at the time of the Reformation; and brings the story right up to date with the present church and its restored Galilee Chapel, where important archaeological artefacts are displayed in an imaginative and magnificent way. This church, now in the centre of the town, is sited in a different place from the original monastic site made of wood, wattle and daub, which was probably nearer the coast on land possibly donated by King Meirchion in the late fifth century.

The strength of this book is that it does not claim too much, either for Illtud or the town named after him. The author has tried to extrapolate what might reasonably be said about the saint by a critical reading of the sources, especially the Life of Illtud written about him in the twelfth century, nearly six hundred years after his death. Like the writings about many saints, this is hagiographical in character: a fact overlooked by later writers about Illtud in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, who also adopted a romantic and uncritical view both of the early Saints and of Celtic Christianity in general. Instead Archdeacon Philip draws on the Life of Saint Samson, who with Gildas and Paul Aurelian is said to have studied under Illtud. This was written in the seventh century by a monk from Dol in Brittany, where Samson as bishop founded many churches – some of which he named after Illtud, although Illtud himself probably never visited Brittany. Since this was written nearer to the time when Illtud lived, it is more likely to reflect monastic and scholastic life at that time. Archdeacon Philip also draws on other historical and archaeological sources of the time, but again never uses them to claim too much.

However, he does correctly claim that the Christian faith was rooted in Wales before the coming of Saint Augustine to Kent in 597, but that too much has been claimed in the past about a separate Celtic church and spirituality in the early centuries. Instead he rightly, in my view, insists that there was a Romano-British church, owing allegiance to Rome, with its own emphases and culture but in an uneasy and ambivalent relationship with the Archbishop of Canterbury. This continued until the Normans divided England and Wales into territorial dioceses, with the four Welsh ones coming under Canterbury’s jurisdiction. In a book of under 200 pages, Archdeacon Philip manages to convey the salient and essential points about the development of this community over its long history, and in so doing has put future historians in his debt.

Introduction

The parish

has a saint’s name time cannot

unfrock.

These lines from the poet R.S. Thomas’ ‘The Moon in Lleyn’¹ could apply to Llantwit Major, where the name of its founder has been preserved in its Welsh form, Llanilltud Fawr, ‘the great community of Illtud’. In the early twelfth-century Book of Llandaff, a compilation of earlier charters, it appears as Lannildut; but in charters of 1180 as Landiltwit; and in 1261 as Laniltwit. Rice Merrick barely mentions the place in his A Booke of Glamorganshires Antiquities (1578),² calling it Llan Iltuit. By the time the antiquarian Benjamin Heath Malkin visited in 1803, it was known as Llantwit Major.³ But although time has preserved the memory of St Illtud in the town’s Welsh name, many of its visitors – and indeed many of its residents – are unaware of his story. After all, Illtud is very much in the second division of saints, not featuring in the lists of the Catholic or Anglican Church except in Brittany and Wales. When he does, he is a shadowy figure, and any factual details of his life are overlaid with legend. The American website Catholic Online has this entry for St Illtud:

One of the most revered saints of Wales, by tradition a cousin of the fabled King Arthur of the Britons. Reportedly a Briton, he and his wife Tyrnihild lived as members of a Glamorgan chief’s army until they became hermits near the River Nadafan. Illtyd then studied with St Dubricius and founded the great abbey of Llanilltud Fawr in Glamorgan, Wales. He was a disciple of St Cadoc. According to one Welsh legend, Illtyd was one of the three Knights of the Holy Grail. He died in Brittany.⁴

As we will see, this is based on an untrustworthy twelfth-century Vita Iltuti (Life of St Illtud), but the Arthurian connection has been exploited down through the centuries, even to the extent of claiming King Arthur was Welsh as a result of Illtud’s supposed kinship. The historical Illtud needs rescuing from the figure of legend.

The town of Llantwit Major lies just off the Glamorgan Heritage Coast, between Barry and Bridgend. The eighteenth-century bard Iolo Morganwg stated⁵ that there were at least 2,000 pupils at the sixth-century monastic school. It seems likely that Iolo’s figure is highly exaggerated, but if not, the town did not reach that level of population again until the 1950s. For many centuries, Llantwit Major was a small village in a prosperous agricultural area: the population in 1841 was 746, only rising by a hundred over the next 50 years. However, with the development of nearby RAF St Athan in the 1930s, local authority housing was built to the south of the town, and from the 1960s onwards considerable private housing. The result is that the population of Llantwit Major now stands at 14,500 and is rising, with a number of new housing developments under construction.

The property page of a national newspaper recently described Llantwit Major as a snoozy, unassuming town,⁶ and the Centre for Economic and Business Research in 2014 named the town as the second most desirable place in Wales to live.⁷ The old centre of Llantwit Major has always been confusing to visitors. Writing in 1938, C.J.O. Evans described it thus:

Its picturesque, crooked streets, narrow and winding, are the nightmare of motorists, and its many exits are the despair of visitors, who often find themselves leaving the town by the wrong road.⁸

An old tradition for this medieval maze is that the town is thus built the better to confound and confuse all enemies, pirates, smugglers and spies, who cannot escape once they are in our midst.⁹

An outer bypass was opened in 1978 and an inner one followed, which greatly eased traffic congestion in the old part of the town: the result is that it has the feel of an overgrown village. The Town Square, with the Town Hall (originally the Guildhall and Court House) and three pubs surrounding the War Memorial, is an interesting mixture of buildings dating from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. Church Street leads down to St Illtud’s Church, which is set low and accessed by a flight of steps, though the parallel Burial Lane allows a level entry.

The notion that Christianity came to this country with St Augustine in 597 was for long the traditional teaching: that the country was almost entirely pagan when Augustine landed in Britain. Even as late as 1997, the organisers of Pilgrims’ Way, commemorating Augustine’s arrival, took some persuading to bring an arm of the pilgrimage through south Wales, and particularly to Llantwit Major. In the event, they did so: on 2 June 1997, 500 people descended on the town. Many of those who had come from England commented that they had not been aware that there was a monastic school here a century prior to Augustine’s mission, and for that reason it could be rightly called ‘the cradle of Welsh Christianity’.

The great interest in ‘Celtic Christian spirituality’ that has developed over the last 30 years or so has helped to redress the balance and correct the perception that Britain was an entirely pagan land after the Romans left. However, it is to places such as Lindisfarne and Iona that the crowds flock: a whole industry has been developed around those islands that can sometimes detract from their spiritual impact. In Wales, Caldey Island is an attraction for day trippers from Tenby, though few realise that the modern Cistercian monastery maintains the tradition of a Celtic Christian foundation to which monks from Llanilltud made their retreat. Off the Llŷn Peninsula in north Wales, Bardsey Island requires more of an effort to visit. It is now at the end of Taith Pererin Gogledd Cymru, the North Wales Pilgrims’ Way. St David’s Cathedral rightly has its fair share of visitors too – but so should Llanilltud, especially if there is any substance in the tradition that the patron saint of Wales studied there.

For over 400 years, the Galilee Chapel at the west end of St Illtud’s Church in Llantwit Major was in a ruinous state. On 2 November 2013, the restored chapel was formally opened as a place for visitors to experience, learn and be inspired by the amazing heritage, ongoing history, and living faith of this ancient holy site.¹⁰ The Galilee Chapel displays the church’s collection of early medieval stones: previously, in Simon Jenkins’ words, these were casually littering the western building, now filled with Sunday school clutter.¹¹ This has certainly enhanced the visitor experience, enabling the stones to be viewed from all sides and providing an opportunity to reflect on the Celtic Christian heritage of Llanilltud. Leaflets at the church say that the story of Llanilltud is one of the greatest untold stories in Welsh history. This book is part of the process of telling that story and providing an understanding of the history and life of the Christian Church in Wales.

1 – Llanilltud before St Illtud

The bard Iolo Morganwg (1747–1826) called the Vale of Glamorgan Britain’s Paradise and the Garden of Wales as a testament to the beauty of this agricultural area, which has been farmed for millennia. There is evidence of human settlement along the Glamorgan Heritage Coast during the Neolithic Age, between 3500 BC and 2000 BC, with long barrows at Nash Point and Dunraven and the discovery of cultivated grasses at Ogmore-by-Sea, all within ten miles of Llantwit Major. During excavations for a new housing development at St Athan, a couple of miles east of Llantwit Major, a Neolithic enclosure was unearthed and pottery and flint were found. These are being analysed by the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff, and will provide important new evidence relating to the lives and deaths of people belonging to the early farming communities of the Vale of Glamorgan. During the Bronze Age (2000 BC to 750 BC) people moved back and forth across the Bristol Channel (which was much narrower than it is today) for trade and settlement. They perhaps used the estuary of the Afon Colhuw as a port, at what is now Llantwit Major. In 1940, Sir Cyril Fox excavated a turf barrow at Six Wells, just north of Llantwit Major, and found evidence of residential huts dating back to c.1000 BC.¹²

The earliest example of an Iron Age feasting site in Wales was discovered in 2003 at Llanmaes, adjoining Llantwit Major. Cremated remains on the site have been dated to between about 2150 BC and 1950 BC. Objects found from the following period show that there must have been a settlement there until about 675 BC, which was subsequently abandoned and then used only for feasting. Thousands of pig bones, feasting vessels, bronze cauldrons, pottery and axes were unearthed, dated to from 600 BC to 10 BC, and also a large Iron Age enclosure. The cauldrons and axes were made in north-west France: this suggests that people came to Llanmaes for the feasting from the continent as well as Britain, again perhaps using the port at Llantwit Major.

The Celts

So who were these people who came to the Vale of Glamorgan – and other parts of Wales – from 600 BC onwards? They are commonly called the Celts, the name given in Greek (Keltoi) and Roman (Celtae) literature to the people of western continental Europe who were not Greek or Roman. However, for over a thousand years after the end of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, the term Celts was not used and it does not appear even in the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (731 AD). With the efforts of scholars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries trying to reconstruct prehistory, there arose the modern concept of a common Celtic language for those countries with a shared linguistic descent in France, Britain and Ireland, developed through an invasion of Celtic tribes from central Europe. However, although there are similarities between the later surviving Breton, Cornish, Welsh, Manx, Irish and Scots Gaelic languages, there have also developed considerable differences, to the extent that the people of one nation would not have generally understood people of another. Similarly, after the post-Roman and early medieval period, there is a popular misconception that there was a