Following in Pilgrims’ Footsteps

The Ffordd y Gyfraith is an old pilgrimage route that runs through the village of Laleston near Bridgend and continues northwards into the hills around the historic village of Llangynwyd (The burial place of the ‘Maid of Cefn Ydfa’). These medieval routes still make good walking today. They have a sort of resonance from all those footsteps of people travelling in hope. Looking at the fragments of wayside crosses and the little platforms that are all that’s left of peasant cottages and bigger farmhouses, you realise that these empty hills were once home to a thriving and complex society.

The two stones in the field are all that remains of the medieval church and village of Llangewydd. Two carved ‘Celtic’ crosses were found here and are now in the National Museum.

So what happened to the settlement – in a word, the Cistercians. This reformed religious order spread from France across Europe in the early twelfth century, reaching Wales in 1131. Part of their ethos was that they wanted to farm their own land. They preferred to settle on unused land and bring it under cultivation themselves. But there was very little unused land in England and Wales – and when they were given land which was already being farmed, they sometimes used a combination of persuasion and moral blackmail to remove the tenants. The Cistercian monks of Margam were given the land around Llangewydd in the middle of the twelfth century and within fifty years they had removed the church and the little settlement around it.

For more information about the the whole route, please check out :

https://indd.adobe.com/view/91d158b9-1da1-4c83-a562-cdd77cc61f23/

Only room for log - Bring your own Pen

 `'•.¸ ¸.•'´`'•.¸ ¸.•'´ CONGRATULATIONS ---> Welshman65 <--- FIRST TO FIND `'•.¸ ¸.•'´`'•.¸ ¸.•'´