Medieval Gendered LandscapesLlanllyr and the Aeron Valley

Jemma Bezant, PhD, CMIfA, FHEA, FRSA

With thanks to the Gee family and all at Llanllyr

Relevant publications

Bezant, J and Grant, K 2016 The post-medieval rural landscape, Post-Medieval Archaeology, 50:1.

Bezant, J. 2016 (in prep) Modern landscapes and seascapes of the Mabinogi, In Davies, P. (ed) A Modern Pagan: Thought and Practice

Austin, D. & Bezant, J. (in press) The Ceredigion Landscape, 12th to 16th Centuries. Ceredigion County History, Volume II. Cardiff: Royal Commission on Ancient and Historic Monuments Wales

Bezant, J and Campion, N, (in prep) Celtic Myth: Land, Sea and Skyscapes, Sophia Centre Press

Bezant, J. 2014 The Hospitaller Estate at Ystrad Meurig, Journal of Welsh Religious History.

Bezant, J. 2014 Revising the monastic ‘grange’: Problems at the edge of the Cistercian world, Journal of Medieval Monastic Studies.

Bezant, J. 2013 The medieval grants to Strata Florida Abbey: mapping the agency of lordship, in Burton, J & Stober, K. (eds) Monastic Wales, New Approaches, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 73-88

Bezant, J. 2013 Travel and Communication, in Burton, J & Stober, K. (eds) Monastic Wales, New Approaches, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 133-146

Llanllyr Mansion, Aeron Valley, CeredigionBuilt in the 1800s

Estate built on floodplainWater, earthworks and drainage

Why is Llanllyr so important?

Because its mother house, Strata Florida Abbey is importantCistercian Abbey c. 1164 Rhys ap Gruffudd.

8-9th century

• TESQUITUS DTOC/MADOMNUAC O/CCON FILIUS ASA/ITGEN DEDIT

• The small ‘waste’ plot (tesquitus) of Ditoc which Aon, son of Asa Itgen gave to Madomnuac

Rare inscribed stone on the estate:recording a grant of land to religious community

EMWARG conference 2014Hosted at LampeterGroup visit to Llanllyr – talk by Prof Nancy Edwards and Howard Williams

Sue Evans (Bangor University) and Dr Adrian Maldonado (University of Chester) investigating Llanfihangel Ystrad 1 (Llanllyr)

From https://howardwilliamsblog.wordpress.com/tag/llanllyr/

The Tudor Mansion

From the Cadw scheduling document:

p. LXXI of Thomas Dineley’s Beaufort Progress (1684), which has the Lloyd coat of arms.

This turned out to be a red herring – the drawing is actually of the Bishop’s Palace in Bangor! The Lloyd family were owners of the Llanllyr estate – and a Lloyd was 17th century Bishop of Bangor – this needs more investigation!

The Archaeology

The bad news….

The former palace of the Bishops of Bangor. Excavation to the east suggests that there has been a palace on this site since the thirteenth-fourteenth century if not earlier. The earliest part of the present building is a timber framed hall with solar and service range, dated to around 1500. This was refaced and incorporated into the present late sixteenth-early seventeenth century building. Tree-ring dating now shows that this range can be attributed to Bp. Bulkeley (1541-53)

Joint excavations in 2014 between Jemma Bezant and Dyfed Archaeological Trust looking for any archaeological evidence of the medieval convent – the foundations of a 17th-18th century mansion.

Llanllyr – An International story

Llanllyr, the historical timeline• 1180? Foundation - The house was founded before 1197 by the Lord Rhys and was under the auspices of

Strata Florida. (Llanllugan pre 1236 and Llansanffraid between 1170 and 1174.)• c. 1200 Giraldus Cambrensis condemns Strata Florida for ‘supressing a poor nunnery’ and appropriating

Hafodwen Grange.• 1284: Compensation - The nuns were awarded 40 marks as compensation for damages incurred during the

Edwardian Conquest. Strata Florida only other southern abbey to receive monies at £78.• 1291 Taxatio: Wealth - The house was estimated to have 60 sheep, 1200 arable acres and £7 10s 0d from

temporalities but no spiritualities. Valued ‘at the bottom of the scale with Grace Dieu £18 5s 8d and Abbey Cwmhir £35 12s 0d (compare to Margam at £255 17s 4.5d)

• 1299: Litigation - Queen Margaret (Edward I's wife) acquitted the abbess of a fine for illegally felling an oak. • 1400s, Poet Huw Cae Llwyd composed a cywydd on behalf of Annes, abbess of Llanllŷr to William Herbert

requesting the gift of an ape!• 1532: Leland notes the cell of Stratflere with Talesarne greene • c.1535: Wealth - According to the Valor Ecclesiasticus the net income of Llanllŷr was £57 5s 4d. • 1536: Survey - The site was surveyed on 29th September, in preparation for the suppression of the house. • 1537: Dissolution - The house was formally suppressed on 26 February 1537, under the 1536 Act of

Suppression.

12th Century Monastic holdings in Ceredigion – the estaes of Llanllyr reconstructed – extensive and significant landholdings.

See Bezant, 2009 Medieval Settlement and Territory: Archaeological Evidence from a Teifi Valley Landscape. British Archaeological Monographs British Series 487.

Because it was founded by the great Welsh prince Rhys ap Gruffudd

Cardigan CastleTalley AbbeyWhitland Abbey1st stone castles1st EisteddfodPreserve Welshnessresisted conquest

Nunneries – female communities very rare

Why is Llanllyr so important?

Cistercian Nunnery at Llanllugan, Powys – between Newtown and Welshpool (founded c.1188 from Strata Marcella)

St Mary’s church, 14th-15th century – remnants of the medieval nunnery church?

Because Welsh nunneries are extremely rareAnother nunnery at ‘Llansanffraid’ but location unknown (Gerald of Wales puts it near Builth) and was only very small.

Why is Llanllyr so important?

Llanllyr passed to the Lloyd family through the marriage of Joan,daughter of Griffith ap Henry, who occupied the property, to Hugh Llewelyn Lloyd.Hugh’s son Morgan (died 1604) became a prominent squire in the late sixteenth century and was High Sheriff of the county four times.

Llanllyr was sold in 1720 to John Lewes and it has remained in the family ever since. The present owners are the Lewes-Gee family.

The Estate MapEstate map of ‘Llanllear Demesne’ dated 1768.

The ‘L’ shaped mansion and barn complex, with its formal garden layout is now gone and the present house built on a ‘new’ site in the 1800s.

This lost mansion was the focus for excavations in 2014 – was this mansion built on the medieval convent site?

‘Old Llanllyr House’ was the focus of excavations – was this built on a medieval site?

A schematic plan of the old house and its surroundings by Colonel John Lewes, John Lewes’s son, (Archaeologia Cambrensis, 1896), shows another building, used as a stable in 1835, behind it, a graveyard and pavement to the side and an old tower, which he remembered as ruined, just behind the ‘old building’.

Note the ‘old tower’ and ‘old graveyard’!

Estate Map rectified digitally onto modern OS maps using a project GIS(Geographic Information System)

The GIS allowed us to produce 3D terrain models using Lidar data – we can model probable wetland and floodplains

The modern OS map overlain on the estate map – allowed us to decide where to excavate

Geophysical survey overlain on modern OS map

Geophysical survey overlain on old estate map

OS map showing site of probable ‘slipper chapel’

Project GIS

Machine-cut evaluation trenches

Aerial view of trenches – ‘old mansion’ is top right with area of cobbling

Former wall lines of old mansion – robber trenches

Cobbled yard area of former mansion

Every stone photographed and drawn

Cobbling near the ‘chapel’?

Edges and shapes – paths, buildings etc?

Fragments of human bone recovered from this area

Grave cuts from ‘old cemetery’ area

Palaeoenvironmental materialProbably Bronze age oak trees preserved in anaerobic wetland valley floor. These are sampled for dendrochronological analysis

Llanllyr – Feminine landscapes of great antiquity

• Females in Welsh grants, very, very rare:• Gwenllian granted ‘Ardiscinkiwet’ to Strata Florida• Owain Gwynedd (d.1170)granted whole commote of

Anhuniog to his wife Angharad as a dowry. (And an unidentified ‘Kelly Agarat’ appears in one of Rhys’s early grants).

• 'Sheela-na-Gig' from St Non’s

Llannon Sheela na Gig

• 12th century??• Pagan fertility• Mason’s joke?• St Non holding the

baby Dewi?• Common in Ireland

Rare in Wales, one at Llanbadar Fawr, another at Margam

The Kilpeck Sheela

Llanllyr – Feminine landscapes of great antiquity

• Females in Welsh grants, very, very rare:• Gwenllian granted ‘Ardiscinkiwet’ to Strata Florida• Owain Gwynedd (d.1170)granted whole commote of Anhuniog to his wife

Angharad as a dowry. (And an unidentified ‘Kelly Agarat’ appears in one of Rhys’s early grants).

• 'Sheela-na-Gig' from St Non’s

• Concentration of female dedications in and around Aeron Valley, (complementing Dewi cult):

• Llansanstffraid, Brigit or Ffraid, holy well at Ystrad Meurig• Llanina, Ina daughter of Ceredig• Hilary or Ilar near Trefilan• St Non’s, Llanerchaeron and Llan-non• Gwnylle, Leucu and Gwenfyl in upper Aeron

Rhys’s original intentions…influenced by his wife andearly female links in Aeron Valley?

How did our nuns afford this?

• They were actually landrich

• Late 1100s – the lands given by Rhys ap Gruffydd.

• By the early 1200s, some of it had been appropriated – Gerald of Wales accuses the monks of Strata Florida of being bad nuns!

• Until now, we believed that this was the start of the end…

• Dissolution figure of £57 5s 4d. Assumed to be a mistake but was it?

• In 1284 awarded 40 marks

Llanllyr – A Female landscape

• Females in Welsh grants, very, very rare:• Gwenllian granted ‘Ardiscinkiwet’ to Strata Florida• Owain Gwynedd (d.1170)granted whole commote of

Anhuniog to his wife Angharad as a dowry. (And an unidentified ‘Kelly Agarat’ appears in one of Rhys’s early grants).

• 'Sheela-na-Gig' from St Non’s• Cluster of female saints dedications in the area

Centre of Arts 15th century

cywydd by Huw Cae Llwyd to Abess Annes

Requested the gift of an ape from Sir William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke

Significance then…

• Long-lived riches – whole of Anhuniog in late 12th

– Hundred years later they built an expensive fishpond complex

– Thriving

• Why?– Coastal trade– Female

pilgrimage/patronage– Its place in European culture– Production of Arts

Research themes• Welsh historical narratives• Female and gendered and

‘other’ landscapes• Archival and historical

material – poetry, the arts• Technology – GIS, LiDAR,

Terrain modelling• Land-use, woodland

management,