The bleeding yew and other treasures

Wales: Like many of our old churchyards, Nevern Church has an avenue of ancient yew trees, some 700 years old, leading from the gate to the church door. One of these trees is famous as 'the bleeding yew', something I've never seen before. Where a limb has been sawn off, the tree 'bleeds' with a deep red sap, the colour and consistency of blood. It has been bleeding for as long as anyone can remember and no-one really knows why. Myths and legends abound, but perhaps the most obvious of them is that it is bleeding in sympathy with Jesus as he died on the cross. 

Within the church, set into the windowsills, are more ancient treasures - a beautiful Celtic braided cross dating back to the 10th century:

and another stone, known as the Maglocunus Stone, dated to the 5th century. It is inscribed in Latin (which you can just about see along the wavy edge at the back) and in Ogham, a curious early medieval script consisting of marks and slashes, which you can see along the edge below.

St Brynach's Church

Wales: St Brynach's Church in Nevern was founded in the Celtic period in 540AD. By the 10th century, it became an important stopping place for pilgrims en route to St David's in the south-west corner of Wales.  You can still see an ancient pilgrim cross, hewn out of rock on the hillside above the village, and an indent in the rock worn away by the feet or knees of pilgrims stopping at the cross.

There is a very interesting history of the church on its website HERE. One of its treasures is the beautiful, carved Celtic cross standing in the churchyard (see below), which dates to the 10th century. There is also a standing stone known as the Vitalianus Stone, dating from around 500 AD and inscribed in Latin and an ancient script called Ogham.

I find old graveyards fascinating and was touched by the memorial stone below, beautifully inscribed. It says: Here lieth the body of Elinor Salmon, the daughter of John Salmon of this parish, who departed this life the 20th day of July 1781 aged 26 years. Afflictions fore long time I bore. Physicians were in vain. Til God did please Death should me seize to ease me of my pain. How sad...

Most of the interior of the church was remodelled by the Victorians in the 1860s, and there is a pretty, modern, stained glass memorial window inserted in 2005. The nave and chancel don't seem to line up and I learned from a post of John's (HERE) that is sometimes deliberate. The nave represents the body of Christ and the side transepts the arms of the cross, so the chancel (his head) may be tilted. In this case it seems to tilt slightly to the right. Or maybe the builders just had wonky plans... 

Nevern

Wales: Nevern, a few miles from Cardigan and over the border into Pembrokeshire, is a pretty village nestled around the river of the same name. The area has been occupied at least since neolithic times, about 4000 years ago. We followed the footpath up the hill to where, in the 1100s, a Norman castle stood, one of the earliest stone castles in Wales. It was destroyed in 1195. The site has been extensively excavated and there is little to see (or photograph) there now except for the mound (motte) where the keep stood and the flat courtyard area that was the bailey. It was fascinating though, and a lovely walk through bluebell woods to get there. 

There was plenty of interest to photograph around the church, where this old mounting block still stands, handily placed to allow you to dismount from your horse (or carriage perhaps) as you arrived at church. 

Behind the church there is an old clapper bridge over a stream.

Pentre Ifan

Wales: Not far from the Iron Age village (see previous posts) lies Pentre Ifan, a huge dolmen structure dated to around 3500 BC. Weighing something like 16 tonnes, the massive capstone is balanced on the tips of three other stones, about 2.5m high. There are three other standing stones that may have formed a doorway to a huge burial chamber covered over with earth and stones or, an alternative theory suggests, the dolmen may have been designed just as it is seen today, as a kind of elaborate standing stone. No bones have been found during excavations at the site, so either it was not used for burial or the bones were later moved.

It stands on a hill with a wonderful view over the Nevern valley and across to the sea. Quite a magical place to visit...

Age old tasks

Wales: Archaeological excavations have uncovered numerous tools and artefacts that give an insight into how the Iron Age people at Castell Henllys actually lived from day to day. Our (personal!) tour guide showed us different methods of grinding grain to make flour. She had a concave rock that enabled her to rub hard at the grain with a stone, work clearly needing strong arms and a lot of stamina. She also had a simple corn mill: two flat stones with the upper one rotating around a wooden post. Grain was poured down the centre and distributes out through grooves. The action of the stones rubbing together grinds it down into flour.

They have not found any cloth still surviving but they have found stone weights that were used to hold the warp threads on a rudimentary wooden loom. Spun threads of wool and flax were used to weave cloth, dyed with herbal decoctions.

In the grounds of the fort, there was a simple wood-turning lathe, powered by a foot paddle.

Some of the roundhouses were decorated with painted designs: shields, knots and wild animals like this powerful wild boar. The warriors would have killed deer and boar for their meat and skins.

We had such a good time on our visit to Castell Henllys. It is a kind of living history and seeing, touching and smelling makes it all come alive. It must be a super place for children to learn. It's all in a lovely setting too, with a path by a stream tumbling through a wooded valley and leading up to the hill fort. There's a very good visitor centre with a shop, an excellent café and some interactive information boards and videos. Highly recommended if you're in the Cardigan/Pembrokeshire border area.

Building Castell Henllys

Wales: The first roundhouse was reconstructed on the Castell Henllys site in the 1990s. The original buildings are beginning to deteriorate and are now being renewed, which gave us a good insight into the building methods.

A company that builds using timber frames has started to put in place the wooden structure of a new hut. Then the walls will be constructed using hazel rods woven through timber posts (the wattle) - see example above left. Once the reed-thatched roof has been added, the walls will be finished with dried mud (the daub). The guide told us that the circular structure is built around a central post. Once the structure is balanced  and self-supporting, roped and jointed together, the central post is sawn off up in the roof, to provide an open living area.

There's a great beauty in the roof structure, being at once organic and ingeniously engineered. The photo below is looking more or less directly up to the apex in the middle.

This is a more detailed view of the thatch overhang at the entrance, showing the timber and ropes.

Iron Age village

Wales: Whilst in Wales, we had a most interesting tour of an Iron Age village, at Castell Henllys, which has been excavated and studied for the past twenty years by archaeologists from York University. They have reconstructed several roundhouses on the actual foundations of a hill fort, belonging to the Demetae tribe, dated to between 500 and 100 BC. Their work has enabled a greater understanding of the Iron Age period, as well as providing training for archaeology students and a wonderful visitor attraction. Luckily, we visited when it was very quiet and had a personally guided tour, which was really fascinating.

The roundhouses are built of wattle and daub on a wooden framework, with reed thatched roofs. The granary (the smaller hut in the photo above), where food was stored, is built on stilts off the ground to mitigate against damp and vermin. The settlement was protected by a complex of earthworks and ditches, including a 'cheveaux de frise' - a stony ditch (right) designed to protect against horses and chariots.

Heat, light and cooking were provided from a central fire within the roundhouse, whose smoke was drawn out through the thatch.

The roundhouses were home to extended families and some have private sleeping quarters separated by woollen curtains. It's estimated that the village could have housed over 100 people, led by a wealthy and influential chieftain. The people were very resourceful and skilled: coppicing woodland, growing crops and keeping livestock;  spinning, dyeing and weaving cloth; turning wood; weaving baskets; grinding grain to make bread and generally living a healthy and sustainable lifestyle. Some would have been warriors and hunters, protecting the settlement from wild animals and human enemies.

The hill fort seems to have been abandoned during the 1st century BC, possibly due to the Roman invasion.

St Dogmael's market

Wales: St Dogmael's has a local producers' market every Tuesday, with all the produce grown, reared or produced within a 30 mile radius of the village. Situated beside the ruined abbey and next to the Coach House Visitor Centre, the market is a colourful sight and packed with high quality goods, both food and crafts. We enjoyed browsing the stalls, buying cheese, pickles and other things.

I was tempted by the dressed crab. (I love fresh crab but it's hard to get at home, being so far from the coast.) However, as we were on our way out for the day, I decided it might not keep so well in a hot car!

The display of hand-knitted socks was colourful, though I wonder if they might be a bit itchy...

Music was provided by a skilled accordionist - and very good coffee is available in the visitor centre adjacent to the market place. We stopped there several times for refreshment during the week. It has a café, shop and gallery and holds some interesting information and objects related to St Dogmael's Abbey.

I fell in love with a small earthenware bowl by the ceramicist David Small, decorated with a pretty turquoise glaze. It was very reasonably priced so I treated myself to it. I've brought it home and then suddenly decided to 'refresh' my whole sitting room around the colour. The decor is mainly neutral cream and I add colour with accessories. I then proceeded to spend four times as much again (!) on new turquoise cushions to match, swapped around some pictures and feel delighted with the new look! 

The Miller's Daughter's tour

Wales: We booked a tour of Y Felin, The Mill, in St. Dogmael's and we were really glad we had. We were the only three in the group so it was, in effect, a private tour and extremely interesting. Our guide was Emma, the miller's daughter. She first showed us how the waterwheel kicks in when the sluice gate is opened. The initial gush of water is quite spectacular and then the wheel gradually assumes its steady. smooth turning.

Inside the mill, in the basement, the water wheel's shaft drives a series of cog wheels with wooden teeth, which operate all the machinery.

On the top floor, a rope and pulley system, driven by the water wheel's power, is simply operated - by sitting on the lever!

Sacks of grain can thus be winched up through a hatch in the floorboards.

The grain is then poured through a fabric chute into a hopper below.

The hopper steadily feeds it into the machinery, where the huge grinding stones get to work. The water-driven power makes the top stone rotate and the grain is fed along channels and is crushed.

Depending on what is being made, the flour pours down through chutes to the ground floor

or can be diverted into a flour grading machine with a series of different gauge meshes, that rotates and sifts the flour,

eventually delivering it through tubes into bags on the floor below.

The finished produce: wholemeal flour, spelt flour, unbleached white flour, rolled oats and a number of other products, can be purchased directly from the mill and from farmers' markets and local outlets. Emma explained that the benefits of the traditional method mean that all the nutrients are retained, whereas with mass produced flour, the wheatgerm and bran are removed and then added back later, and flours from different sources are often blended. (See HERE if you're interested.) 

I bought some rolled oats, which I've yet to try. Sadly, I can't eat wheat flour but my friends bought some bread for their sandwiches. It was rich and crumbly, a bit tricky to cut evenly with the blunt bread knife in our holiday flat (!) but delicious nonetheless. We really enjoyed the tour. Another thing that I'd highly recommend if you're ever in mid Wales.

Y Felin (The Mill)

Back to my holiday journal: 
Wales: Nestled in the centre of St Dogmael's, beside its mill pond, is Y Felin, one of the last working water mills in Wales producing traditional stoneground flour. Probably originally built in the 12th century by monks from the nearby abbey, its history is documented from the 1640s. It was a working mill until the 1920s, when the miller, Evan Gwynne, died. After that it lay closed up and unused, until it was bought in 1977 by Michael and Jane Hall, who set about restoring it, including the laborious work of digging out the mill pond and sluice. Inside, it still has the machinery that was installed in 1820, restored by Mr Hall and now in full working order again.

The pond is fed by a stream coming down off the hill behind. Water then runs through a sluice gate to power the water wheel that, by a series of interconnected cog wheels and shafts, drives the mill machinery.

Even the door is ancient, marked with signs that have been authenticated to the 15th century.

The mill not only sells bread and flour but second-hand books too! 

Come back tomorrow and I'll show you round... We had a tour.