***PLEASE NO SPOILER PICS IN YOUR LOGS***
THE SERIES
This is a 5mile, figure 8 type of stroll around the pretty and historic village of Laleston. You could, of course, break it up or do them randomly, whatever suits your day. Due to the small size of the village, and quite a bit of interesting stuff to see, I've had to detour out into the countryside quite a bit, and still some things could not have their own cache. So I've written in the descriptions if there are other interesting things to see en-route. There's parking all around the village, especially near the church and post office, please park considerately and don't block any access. The route goes over farm fields, so some of the caches will not be available to wheelchairs or buggies, check the attributes.
THE CACHE
Following the lane from No 6, we come back into the village at the well, where we started. You can quit now, or keep going, but it gets even more interesting from here on in I promise. Keep going down Well St into Laleston and you pass The Great House on your right, an Elizabethan manor house with parts of the building dating back to 1586. As you cross the road you will also see a milepost, one of a series of cast-iron mileposts erected in the 1830’s for the Bridgend Turnpike Trust, the road itself being turnpiked in 1764. We then head up the road to St David's church, parts of which date back to the 13th and 14th Centuries.
The coordinates take you on a little detour from the front of the church due to proximity issues, it is a micro within a larger container, pencil and FTF included, but no room for anything else. Please be stealthy, it's a surprisingly busy little village. Several cachers have reported difficulty getting the lid off, you may need some sort of small leverage device, I found a key worked fine.
****Congrats Sniffadogz FTF****
**************************************
For full information on how you can expand the Church Micro series by
sadexploration
please read the
Place your own Church Micro
page before you contact him at
churchmicro.co.uk
See also the Church Micro
Statistics and
Home
pages for further information about the series.
**************************************
St David's is a Grade I listed medieval church with its fabric, including timber roofs, mainly intact, and having group value with the churchyard cross and Cliff Cottage.
In 1180, William, Earl of Gloucester is recorded as having granted land in the area to William Lageles, from whom the village is thought to have got its name. The current church was built later, to replace the nearby church of St Cewydd(Llangewydd). The nave and chancel are believed to date to the late 13th and 14th centuries, and the southern porch and tower to the later medieval period.
During the 16th century the church and the manor of Laleston belonged to Margam Abbey, and in 1522, the parishioners were given a lease on the tithe barn. At the Dissolution, Sir Rice Mansel purchased the manor.
Those who officiated as parish priests or curates over the years included John Evans (died 1847) who later turned to Methodism.
Sir Stephen Glynne, 9th Baronet, visited the church in 1847, and left a written account of the architecture.
The church is built on a standard plan, with a west tower, nave and lower chancel. The tower interior is in the Perpendicular Gothic style. The church underwent restoration by John Prichard in 1871, and the stained glass windows, probably by Clayton and Bell, are from that decade.
The interior is limewashed, and features numerous engravings on the walls, dated to the 17th and 18th centuries. The chancel stalls, of oak, and the desk and pulpit date to 1958. William Clarke of Llandaff was hired for wood carvings in the sanctuary; he added the reredos in 1908. St David's Church became a Grade I listed building on 26 July 1963.
Several graves of the Ben(n)et family of Laleston House (located close to the church), a family notable locally in the 17th and 18th centuries, are to be found in the church. In 1762, Thomas Bennet left a legacy of £52 10s for poor relief.