Barges, Waterfalls, and Hares

Our last organized trip as part of the Celtic Christianity course ended up being to Llarhaeadr-ym-Mochnant and then Pennant Melangell. It had been an extremely rainy night and so one or two other places that had been planned were cancelled, but from my perspective this much simpler trip turned out to be better than the one planned.

We began by going to see the Poncyslite Aqueduct and the canal barges (some of which we’d passed on Saturday) that travel over it and through the neighboring valleys. Kathy walked across from one end to the other while I part way across and then down to the Dee River to see the actual bridge construction. The early 19th century aqueduct is made up of 19 arches that cover more than 1000 feet of space from one valley’s banks to the other. Walking cross it has great views.

From there we went to Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant. The purpose of the trip was to see the Church of St. Dogfan, where William Morgan (the first person to translate the Bible into Welsh) worshipped. Except for a cross that has been dug up and now is in one corner of the church—the remains of a monastery that was once on the site?—I didn’t find the place so exciting. After the basic lecture, while the rest of our group looked at the sanctuary in more detail, Kathy, Graham and I walked through the town in the direction of the Pistyll Rhaeadr, Wale’s highest waterfall. We couldn’t get to the waterfall itself, which was about 3 to 4 miles away, but we got to see the village, which was charming. (Several of the scenes from the movie The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain were filmed in Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant.) Everywhere on our walk, there were beautiful flowers—wild flowers in the fields and by the brook and gardens outside the homes.

Next we took a long ride away from any villages along deserted (barely) one lane roads to Pennant Melangell, the church dedicated to St. Melangell, a 7th or 8th century saint who is known as the patron saint of hares. The church is in the middle of nowhere—a nowhere with gorgeous views of mountains all around it—in a valley that’s often described as a thin place because heaven and earth appear very close there. In the 12th century a shrine was build on the site (and perhaps a convent?) and people often made pilgimages to visit it. During the Reformation, however, the shrine was torn down. In the 20th century, archaeology turned up several remains from the building—including a rood screen that depicts the story of St. Melangell and the hares. Since then hundreds of thousands of pounds have been spent by the Anglican Church of Wales to restore it, though the building still reeks of mold and made me very dizzy. We had a very brief worship service in the sanctuary. Luckily we spent more of the time in the nearby building that was originally designed as a cancer help center and now serves as a free mental health counseling center (though how anyone would get there on a regular basis given how far it is from even the tiniest of villages is beyond me). By lunchtime the sun was shining and so we ate outside with pheasants walking around in the nearby fields and great views of flowers, mountains, and sheep. And in the yard between the center and the sanctuary were these four amazingly yew trees, which many think may be 2000 years old.

Too Many Church Fundraising Speeches!

On Saturday, July 21st, we did the second of the day trips through northern Wales with the Celtic Christianity group. I enjoyed the first stop of the day a lot, but, aside from the chance to see some more of the countryside, the rest of the day seemed largely a waste to me.

The first stop we made was at Valle Crucis Abbey, which is in the mountains near Llangollen and was founded by Cistercian monks in the 13th century and then expanded a century or so later. It was the second wealthiest monastery in Wales during its height. It had been raining as we drove there and most everything was extremely muddy, but even so you could get a sense of how quiet and peaceful the surroundings must have been for the sheep farmer monks who lived there. Nearby, as we drove out, we passed Eliseg’s Pillar, which is a shaft-stump of what’s left of a 9th century cross and is one of the earliest pieces of the puzzle over how and when crosses were used in northern Wales.

From Valle Crucis we drove to the tiny sheep farming village of Bryn Eglwys to see St. Tysilio’s Church, which has a connection with the Yale family and has received a lot of the funds to keep it up from that family. I was at a loss for why we were seeing the church. While it originally probably dated from the 6th century, Margaret Harvey, the former rector, spent much more time telling us about the Yales than about any connection it might have with Celtic Christianity. The ony thing that I found redeeming about the time there was that she actually mentioned the congregation and what they were doing as well as all the funds being spent on renovations and repairs.

After we left St. Tysilio’s, our bus raced Margaret to Corwen, a small market town, where we had lunch at Coleg y Groes, a renovated 12th century retreat house that she and Heather Fenton, the current rector of St. Tysilio’s, run. There Dale and I were supposed to meet with Lyn Bechtel, the Drew professor who was to work with us on our Celtic Christianity research, but she never showed.

During the afternoon we went to see more old churches and heard more stories about how funds were being used to restore them. First we hiked through a field to see Llangar Church, a tiny medieval building with 15th century wall paintings, a 17th century painting of a skull that greets you when you first step through the narthex door, and box pews. Once a month there’s a small church service there, but otherwise no one except the occasional tourist uses the building.

Then we went to see Rhug Chapel, which had been a private chapel built
in the 17th century by a colonel (who may have been important, but his name meant nothing to me) and William Morgan, the bishop who first translated the Bible into Welsh. At this point, as our tour guide started on his spiel yet again of how funds were raised to repair this chapel, I decided to go for a walk out in the raining but beautiful garden rather than listening to what was being said.

At the end of the day, we spent about 45 minutes in the town of Llangollen. It was still raining fairly hard, so we went spent the time walking in and out of stores in the town. The town had a Fringe Festival—a smaller scale of the Edinburgh one?—going on, so, although we were in between the afternoon and evening performance times, there were lots of people on the streets.

On the bus ride back to St. Deiniol’s, I kept wondering what connection the people planning the trip saw between what we saw in most of the churches and Celtic Christianity, since most were built after the time when Celtic Christianity was at its height. Between that and the Drew professor not even bothering to show up, my frustration with the course was pretty great.

Pilgrimage to Aberdaron

Two weeks ago, we did our first trip through the northern part of Wales, moving through the Lleyn peninsula and ending in Aberdaron. Despite all the rain, the sun stopped as the bus made its way to the first church we were to see, a church in Clynnog Fawr associated with Beuno, the 7th century Northern Welsh saint who by legend had amazing healing powers, was the uncle of Saint Gwenfrewi (Winifred), and founded a monastery where the church currently is. The church is set right alongside the road in a tiny town –my guess is there were about 100 people living there—with a nice little restaurant/pub that we got to know well because, when we’d gotten back on board after seeing the church, our bus wouldn’t start again. We ended up spending another hour or so hanging out in the pub while the bus company sent a replacement and then stopping there again later for tea on our trip back to St. Deiniol’s. The church itself was a pretty large one for such a small town and had been used as a stopping place for pilgrims who were making the journey toward Abedaron and then ultimately Bardsey Island, but I didn’t find it remarkable in any other way. The church rector, who met us, pointed out both a painting on a wall of their smaller chapel, and a trunk which traditionally was used during Beuno’s day to keep any donations that pilgrims made. Both were in a very damp, very musty room which can’t have been good for them.

From there we traveled along the rest of the Lleyn peninsula to Aberdaron, which is a quaint village with lots of narrow winding streets, a great coastline with a small beach, and St. Hywyn’s Church. We met there with the vicar, Evelyn Davies, who has put most of her energy into fundraising to restore the church, using both its connection to pilgrimages to Bardsey Island, which can be seen from its graveyard (and which you can see behind Kathy and me in the picture) and to R.S. Thomas, the Welsh poet who was vicar at St. Hywyn’s from 1967 to 1978. (At the back of the church is a copy of his—to my mind, mediocre—poem The Other” on a slate.) I found much of her talk, focused as it was on restoring a church building rather than the people of the area or any other sense of mission, very boring and slightly frustrating, but really enjoyed being in the village itself (a little of which you can see up the road from the church cemetery).

From the village of Aberdaron we traveled up some very bumpy, very narrow roads into pasture lands where there was nothing but sheep and a wonderful view of Bardsey Island (which you can see between the heads of Dale Skinner, another student in my Drew D.Min. program, and me).

By then the sun was out, the sheep were running around happily, and the view of Bardsey was great.