Llandudoch, St Dogmaels and St Thomas the Martyr
By Neil Ludlow
The monastic site at St Dogmaels has a rich and lengthy history. It began as an early medieval cult site, within which a monastic community was founded for the Tironensian order of reformed Benedictines by the Norman lord Robert FitzMartin, probably around 1115-16. It will be argued that the substantial medieval town at the abbey gate, first mentioned in the 1130s, was the result of plantation within an earlier, pre-Norman enclosure that is defined by present-day streets and boundaries; it possibly contained a concentric inner enclosure. A parish church, dedicated to St Thomas the Martyr, lies within the abbey precinct and is suggested to have also served as a chapel for visitors to the house. Much antiquarian confusion over the early medieval site, the parish church and a possible separate chapel, which has coloured published accounts, will be discussed and, it is hoped, unravelled.
The pre-Norman foundation
King Henry I’s confirmation of 1121-35, of Robert FitzMartin’s charter to the abbey, states that FitzMartin had given the Tironensians ‘the ancient church of St Dogmael with possession of the land adjoining the same church, whose name is Llandudoch’ (Caley et al. 1846, 130), revealing the presence of an earlier religious house.[1] On the face of it, the passage also suggests an association with two separate saints, Dogmael and Tudoch (or ‘Tydecho’), both of whom were venerated in early medieval Wales (see e.g. RCAHM(W) 1925, 359; Sambrook 2000, ix-x). However, Sabine Baring-Gould considered it probable that the ‘Tudoch’ element here derived from the addition of the honorific prefix ‘ty’ to the name Dogmael (Baring-Gould and Fisher 1908, 349 n. 4).[2] This reading has been challenged, with the suggestion that the name would emerge as ‘Tyddoch’ (Wade-Evans 1935, 129-30), but this is in fact the form used in a source from AD 988 (‘Llan Dethoch’; Williams ab Ithel 1860, 21), and it is most likely that a single name – and thus a single ecclesiastical site – is represented (see e.g. Pierce 2000, 131-2).
Nevertheless, the apparent association with two saints has given rise to much speculation, and some confusion. This has its origins in the sixteenth century when the Pembrokeshire antiquarian George Owen recorded a local tradition that ‘in ancient time the abbey [of St Dogmaels] stood in an open field near the place called the Caer, a mile from the place where it now stands’; the earthwork at Manian Fawr, 1¾ miles NNW of the abbey, is probably meant (Charles 1948, 267 and n. 5), near which a later medieval chapelry may formerly have stood (see below; Pritchard 1907, 201-6). No other basis for this tradition is known. It was nonetheless reproduced by later antiquarians (e.g. Fenton 1811, 513), and was enlarged upon in the Royal Commission Inventory which identified Owen’s ‘Caer’ with an entirely different site, Caerau Gaer, an Iron Age hillfort well over two miles west of St Dogmaels (RCAHM(W) 1925, 359-60), with another possible chapel site where burials have apparently been observed. The Commissioners went further, claiming the latter to have been the site of St Tudoch’s monastery, co-existent with an eponymous second site at St Dogmaels itself, and that the two divisions of the former parish of St Dogmaels perpetuated the jurisdictions of the two houses.[3] Elements of this narrative still find their way into published accounts (e.g. Lloyd et al. 2004, 432).
It is however clear from the phrasing of King Henry’s confirmation that FitzMartin’s abbey occupied the same site as its early medieval predecessor. The abbey precinct now features seven Early Christian Monuments which, while perhaps not all in situ, suggest an ecclesiastical presence since the sixth century AD (Edwards 2007, 456-68). And a street southeast of the abbey is named ‘Mwtshwr’ (Fig. 1), perpetuating a pre-existing place-name; mwtshwr/mystwyr is an Old Welsh corruption of the Latin ‘monasterium’, in use from the eighth century and a further indicator of a pre-Norman monastic presence at St Dogmaels (Pierce 2000, 124-5, 130-4).
It is likely that the curving line followed by St Dogmaels’s High Street respects the boundary of a large, circular ‘bangor’ enclosure of a kind associated with early monastic sites in Wales (Edwards and Lane 1992, 4-5; James 1992, 65-70; Ludlow 2009, 71-6), the eastern half of which is occupied by the abbey buildings (Figs. 1 and 3); the continuous property boundaries further south and west may indicate the remainder of this enclosure (see James 1992, 74). These large ecclesiastical enclosures probably saw multiple uses containing, for example, garden plots as well as monastic buildings and burials. Usage could also be more numinous: a confirmation to the abbey, made in 1444-5, mentions ‘a certain immunity called Nothvadegwell alias refugium’ (Cal. Papal Registers 1431-47, 454-5), perpetuating early rights of sanctuary (nawdd), within a defined physical area or noddfa.
Fig. 1: Plan of St Dogmaels, showing the abbey site (adapted from Ordnance Survey 1906, 1:2500 second edition, Pembrokeshire Sheet II.3)
Geophysical survey immediately south of the abbey buildings has revealed a curving feature (Gaffney and Gater 1991), where a bank may show in aerial photographs (Fig. 2), possibly representing a smaller, inner circular enclosure, in an arrangement known elsewhere in Wales and e.g. Cornwall (Edwards and Lane 1992, 11; James 1992, 65-70; Ludlow 2009, 73-6).[4]
Fig. 2: Aerial view of St Dogmaels Abbey from southeast (©Dyfed Archaeological Trust, 1992)
The Middle Ages
The exact date of Robert FitzMartin’s reconstitution of the site along Norman monastic lines, and its dedication to St Mary, remains uncertain. Tiron Abbey (Eure-et-Loir), from which it was colonised and to which it was granted, was consecrated in 1109 (Thompson 2014, 211). The lordship of Cemais, within which St Dogmaels lay, appears to have been secured by FitzMartin between 1108 and 1113 (Lloyd 1911, 425; Walker 2002, 151);[5] Henry I first confirmed FitzMartin’s grant of St Dogmaels, as a priory of Tiron, some time between 1112 and 1118 (Haggar 2017, 295; Johnson and Cronne 1956, 143). All in all, a date in 1115-16 is considered most likely (Thompson 2014, 115, 144; also see Lloyd 1911, 425).
The house had been raised to abbey status by 1120 (Johnson and Cronne 1956, 149-50; Round 1899, 352-3). It appears in the earliest records as the ‘abbey of Cemais’ or ‘St Mary in Cemais’ (e.g. Caley et al. 1846, 129; Davies 1946, 268; Johnson and Cronne 1956, 149-50; Round 1899, 352-3, 356, 527; also see Thompson 2014, 84), by which it was occasionally known into the thirteenth century (Brewer 1863, 186, 212). However, much like the FitzMartins themselves, it soon acquired a Welsh accent: it was informally being called St Dogmaels (and Llandudoch) by the late 1130s (Williams ab Ithel 1860, 41), while the pre-Norman dedication continued to be used, as ‘St Mary and St Dogmael’, in formal records (Cal. Charter Rolls 1257-1300, 373; Isaacson 1917b, 765, 777). Welsh abbots were being appointed by the end of the twelfth century (Davies 1946, 301-27).[6]
The abbey church was planned on an ambitious scale, approaching that of the great Tironensian houses founded by the Scots Crown e.g. Kelso in Roxburgh and Arbroath in Angus (see Ludlow et al. 2002, 76-8), but appears not to have been completed to its original, aisled design (Hilling 2000, 36-7; Fig. 4). Thereafter it was never one of Britain’s wealthier houses: valued at only £87 in 1535 (Caley et al. 1846, 132), its meagre documentary record mainly comprises pleas of poverty and petitions for exemption from taxation (e.g. Fryde 1974, 41, 46-8; Isaacson 1917b, 795, 821, 827; Rees 1975, 231).[7] And while a crypt beneath the thirteenth-century chancel hints at the presence of relics, there is no tradition of pilgrimage.[8]
The medieval town
The civil settlement appears to have been a deliberate plantation of the early abbots, who were lords of the manor (Charles 1948, 267):[9] development occupies a significant part of the suggested outer enclosure and runs up to the smaller, post-Conquest precinct (see below and Fig. 1), while the term ‘villam’ was being used by 1138 (Williams ab Ithel 1860, 41). Later medieval references confirm its status as a town (Caley et al. 1846, 130; Cal. Papal Registers 1431-47, 454-5).[10] The abbots, clearly keen to exploit the economic potential provided by the presence of their house – and perhaps in response to the development of nearby Cardigan – were licenced to hold a market (Owen 1892, 142).[11] The town was defined as a borough in c.1600 (Owen 1897, 398 n. 1, 495-6, 498, 505); no charter survives, so it may have been a borough ‘by prescription’. It was also one of the three corporate towns of Cemais, along with Newport and Fishguard, and was governed by a portreeve (Charles 1948, 267; Owen 1897, 517).
Fig. 3: (left) detail from St Dogmaels tithe map, of 1838; (right) detail from Ordnance Survey 1890, 1:2500 first edition, Pembrokeshire Sheet II.3
Properties within St Dogmaels, moreover, appear to have been the formal burgage plots typical of medieval towns. They are specifically termed ‘burgages and tenements’ in a deed of 1537 (Caley et al. 1846, 130-1), and in c.1600 it was noted, based on former rents, that the medieval town had comprised 105 ‘burgage plots’ (Charles 1948, 267); the properties comprised 71 whole burgages and 34 half-burgages (ibid.). Though seldom acknowledged in published accounts, this was a very respectably-sized plantation lying within the second of the four ranks of Welsh medieval towns defined by Ian Soulsby, ie. those with between 100 and 200 burgages (see Soulsby 1983, 23). Not all of these plots were still occupied in c.1600: 60 householders were recorded at St Dogmaels in 1563, but it was still the largest town in Cemais and larger than the boroughs of Newport (much declined) and Fishguard, where 50 and 41 householders were recorded respectively (Howells 1977, 87). Nevertheless, St Dogmaels had grown no further by the nineteenth century, by which time it was described as a village (e.g. Fenton 1811, 514) – as it is today.
High Street represents the main street, and centre, of the medieval town. Leading southwards from the street, and running up to the abbey precinct, is a series of long, narrow plots (matched on the north side of High Street; Figs. 1 and 3). Though they are incompletely shown on the tithe map of 1838 (Fig. 3), its surveyors recorded ownership blocs rather than individual properties (which were often occupied by tenants of the same landowner), and it is clear that the plots perpetuate the medieval burgage tenements; undivided plots on both sides of High Street formerly averaged around 10 metres wide (Figs. 1 and 3), i.e. two perches, a customary width in the new plantations of Britain (see e.g. Slater 1988, 96-8). In 2015, the remains of walling and stone-lined drains were revealed in an archaeological trench in the plot alongside Church Lane, and appear to relate to the late-medieval town rather than the abbey (Ludlow 2018, 46-9; Murphy and Enright 2015).
The monastic precinct
The abbey buildings occupy a large, angular enclosure (Figs. 1-4), over four hectares in extent, which may represent part of the monastic precinct: excavation in 2014 suggested that its long, straight northern boundary follows a medieval wall-line (Pannett 2014). Carved out from the larger, circular enclosure, it apparently supplanted the smaller inner enclosure suggested above.
The Tironensians established sixteen houses in the British Isles, but little is known of the layout of their precincts, of which the remains are scant (discussed in Ludlow et al. 2002, 75-80); it is likely however that, in general, they conformed to ‘standard’ Benedictine arrangements. A rare survival is at the Scottish Tironensian abbey of Lindores, founded c.1190 at Newburgh in Fife (http://canmore.org.uk/collection/1228177; see Fig. 4).
Fig. 4: Plan of the precinct at Tironensian Lindores Abbey (Fife), and St Dogmaels Abbey
It can be assumed that the precinct at St Dogmaels was always entered from the north: as noted, High Street was the main street and commercial nucleus of the medieval town, while the main entry into the abbey church – which is cut into the hillside, precluding a west door – was in the north wall. So it is highly likely that Church Lane perpetuates the route from High Street to the precinct gateway; elsewhere in west Wales, the access routes to, for example, Carmarthen Friary and Carmarthen Priory are both preserved as modern lanes which, as at St Dogmaels, lie between medieval burgage plots (James 1993, 23-6; James 1997, 107).[12]
Nothing survives from the precinct gateway at St Dogmaels. It may have stood alongside High Street, with Church Lane representing an extension of the precinct in the form of a walled alley-way, as at Carmarthen Friary and elsewhere (James 1997, 107); the tithe map may suggest a building closing off the north end of Church Lane, perhaps representing a gatehouse (Fig. 3), but this is very vague. Or perhaps the gateway occupied the same site as the present entry between Church Lane and the abbey buildings. The entrance does not appear in any antique prints and pictures, while other source material is scant. Giraldus Cambrensis’s brief account of his visit to the abbey in 1188, with Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury, contains nothing descriptive (Thorpe 1978, 171), although elsewhere he apparently mentions a ‘gateway’ (Pritchard 1907, 69), while the ‘gate or wall of the abbey’ is mentioned in a will of 1692 (ibid., 211).
Our best preserved Tironensian gateways are in Scotland. The long, vaulted gate-passage at Arbroath is thirteenth-century, and indicates the importance of this royal house.[13] The simple archway into the inner precinct at Lindores is earlier, from around 1200 (Fig. 4); something similar may have existed at St Dogmaels, although a gate-tower would not have been beyond the means of even a relatively poor house. A small walled enclosure stands astride the northern precinct boundary, immediately west of the present entry (Figs. 1-4), and is the only substantial break in its line. Now containing a garden, it forms a rectangle, aligned roughly east-west and measuring 25m by 8m. Could it perpetuate the footprint of an abbey building? It is unlikely to have been either the abbey gatehouse itself, or a gatehouse chapel as at e.g. Tintern, Mon. and Whalley, Lancs. (see Hall 2001, 61-92): it lies to one side of the Church Lane entry meaning, as well, that although it is correctly oriented, any liturgical east window would be obstructed by the precinct gate. Lay infirmaries were situated just within the gateways at Abingdon and Reading abbeys (Ditchfield and Page 1923, 339-42), and the St Dogmaels enclosure is consistent in size with such a building – or, given its location, perhaps a stable. It might repay further investigation.
The parish church of St Thomas
We have seen that St Dogmaels was a sizeable town by the end of the Middle Ages, with origins in the twelfth century. It was also the head of a parish. At least two Tironensian priory churches are known also to have served parishioners – Hamble, Hants., and Titley, Herefs. (Hughes and Stamper 1981, 24-6; Page 1908, 469-71; RCAHM 1934, 190) – but this arrangement appears not to have been common practice within the Order in England and Wales. The parish church at St Dogmaels now lies within the abbey precinct, immediately north of the abbey church (Figs. 1-4).[14] Dedicated to St Thomas the Martyr, and originally a possession of the abbey, it has been subject to muddled and misleading accounts. The present structure was built in 1848-52, on the site of an existing church with the same dedication (Lloyd et al. 2004, 436; RCAHM(W) 1925, 359-60). This was described by Richard Fenton in 1811 as ‘evidently raised from the ruins of the Abbey, as the windows of the chancel . . . exhibit remains of workmanship that could never have been meant originally to furnish such an edifice’ (Fenton 1811, 512-13);[15] it is shown on the tithe map of 1838 (Fig. 3), and was depicted by the Buck brothers in 1740 (Fig. 5). The antiquarian George Owen however stated, in the 1590s, that ‘the parish church in old time stood between the two mills . . . the walls yet are to be seen called yr Hen Eglwys’ (Charles 1948, 267).[16]
Fig. 5: St Dogmaels Abbey from southwest, by Samuel and Nathaniel Buck, 1740. The parish church of St Thomas is just visible behind the nave, on the left
Owen’s account shows that, by the 1590s at least, the parish church occupied its present site and that Hen Eglwys was already ruinous. Traces of the latter were apparently still visible in 1811 (Fenton 1811, 513), and the location is marked ‘Chapel (site of)’ on old OS maps (see Figs. 1 and 3). Succeeding accounts, however, have misrepresented both Owen and Fenton. Emily Pritchard, in her study of St Dogmaels, bestowed a dedication to St Thomas upon Hen Eglwys, in defiance of Owen who gave none,[17] while suggesting that it was not replaced by the present parish church until the early eighteenth century – i.e. after 1590 – referencing documents from 1691, which seem, however, to describe a chapelry at Manian Fawr rather than Hen Eglwys (Pritchard 1907, 199-206; see above). Her assumptions have nevertheless proved persistent (see e.g. Kemp 2014, 5-6, 21-2; Lloyd et al. 2004, 433, 436; RCAHM(W) 1925, 360). It is possible, however, that a chapel of some kind existed at the latter site: stone-lined cist graves were discovered nearby in 1905 (Pritchard 1907, 200),[18] while an archaeological evaluation in 2014 hinted at the presence of a medieval building in the vicinity (Kemp 2014, 21). But its nature, location and date remain unknown, and Owen’s suggestion that it was ever the parish church must be doubted.
Pritchard also confused the issue of the Thomas dedication. This is recorded, from 1404 onwards, as St Thomas the Martyr (Isaacson 1917a, 321), i.e. Becket, who was canonised in 1173. Pritchard claimed that the dedication originally belonged to the apostle of that name (Pritchard 1907, 199), presumably following the Valor Ecclesiasticus, of 1535, in which the parish church is called ‘sancto Thomas aplo’ (Caley et al. 1846, 132). This is, however, the only time a dedication to St Thomas the Apostle appears in the sources and it is clear that the church, like many others, had been hastily rededicated in response to Henry VIII’s hostility towards the Becket cult.[19] Many churches did not return to their original dedications until the nineteenth century (Vincent 2016, 105), but the St Dogmaels dedication is correctly given as Becket in documents from 1537 and 1538-9 (Caley et al. 1846, 131-2); its subsequent appearances are generally just as ‘St Thomas’.
There is a cluster of Becket dedications in Pembrokeshire, which may be consequent upon the establishment of the chapel dedicated to the saint, possibly between c.1200 and 1220 (Lloyd et al. 2004, 398), in the north transept of St Davids Cathedral; the dedication was favoured by Bishop Bek, 1280-93, who used it at Llawhaden Hospice, Pembs., and at the short-lived college at Llangadog, Carms. (Roberts 1920, 137). At any rate, the dedication was certainly used between 1200 and 1210 for the priory and a parish church at Haverfordwest (Caley et al. 1849, 444). And, perhaps significantly, St Dogmaels’s daughter house at Pill was associated with a chapel of St Thomas the Martyr, established by the priory’s patrons before 1331 (Hunter 1852, 267-8).[20]
The earliest reference to St Thomas the Martyr’s Church at St Dogmaels is said to be from 1357 (Pritchard 1907, 217).[21] No parish church is listed in the Taxatio of 1291 (Astle et al. 1802, 272-3, 276), but we have seen that a settlement was present from an early period. So while it is possible that the nave of the abbey church was reserved for lay use, as at Hamble and Titley, an omission from the survey may be implied.[22] If so, it is possible that St Thomas was an early foundation, perhaps under influence from St Davids or Haverfordwest, although it is conceivable that Archbishop Baldwin’s visit to the abbey in 1188 is a context for the dedication. It is called the parish church of St Thomas the Martyr in a source from 1404 (Isaacson 1917a, 321), and as ‘St Thomas’ it is mentioned throughout the sixteenth century (see above; Pritchard 1907, 173-83). It was a rectory of the abbey which, until the Dissolution, appointed its vicars (Caley et al. 1846, 132; Isaacson 1917a, 321; Owen 1897, 297, 301, 132, 509).
In view of the above, I suggest that the parish church always occupied its present site, north of the abbey church and close to the precinct boundary. This was a favoured location for parish churches attached to monasteries, and is closely followed at e.g. Abingdon (Oxon.), Muchelney (Somerset), Reading (Berks.) and Westminster Abbey (Bradley and Pevsner 2003, 207-10; Ditchfield and Page 1923, 339-42; Goodall and Kelly 2004, 4-5; see Fig. 6). All were Benedictine or, like St Dogmaels, reformed Benedictine houses, and their parish churches similarly lie very close to the precinct gatehouse, as at many other Benedictine houses e.g. Bury St Edmunds Abbey.
Significantly, the western, lay half of St Thomas’s Church faces the suggested precinct gatehouse, and the route towards the abbey complex. Moreover, raised ground levels suggest many centuries of burial, rights of which it will have possessed as a parish church.
Fig. 6: Aerial views of: (left) St Dogmaels Abbey (Tironensian), from south; and (right) Muchelney Abbey, Somerset (Benedictine), from southwest. The relationship between the abbey church, and the parish church to its north, can be seen at both (from Hilling 2000, and Goodall and Kelly 2004)
In this location, St Thomas’s could also function as a ‘gatehouse chapel’, i.e. a chapel between the precinct entry and the monastery itself, for the use of monastic guests. Hospitality, and the provision of accommodation and food to travellers and pilgrims, was fundamental to the Rule of St Benedict, according to which the guest should firstly be greeted by the porter at the precinct gate, then taken to the chapel for prayer before being conveyed to the guest-house (Kerr 2001, 103). The remains of the guest-house at St Dogmaels are thought to be fourteenth- or fifteenth-century (Hilling 2000, 45), but visitor accommodation will have been present from the first. It was of sufficient quality to welcome Archbishop Baldwin’s entourage in 1188, and to ‘look after them comfortably’ (Thorpe 1978, 171). The guest-house lies directly opposite the suggested precinct gate (Fig. 4), and travellers would therefore have passed directly alongside St Thomas’s Church on their way between the two. Chapels lay between gateway and guest-house in the monasteries of many monastic orders (see Hall 2001, 64-90).
After the Dissolution
St Dogmaels Abbey, along with its daughter priories at Pill and Caldey in Pembs., was dissolved in 1536 (Caley et al. 1846, 129; Ludlow et al. 2002, 49). The king leased the abbey and manor of St Dogmaels to John Bradshaw of Presteigne who, in 1544, received a grant of the property for the sum of £512 (Caley et al. 1846, 129, 130-2). He converted the conventual buildings into a mansion house (Hilling 2000, 37). The Crown retained patronage of St Thomas’s Church but the rectorship was leased by Bradshaw, who was responsible for the vicar’s stipend (Owen 1897, 305 n. 7, 312; Pritchard 1907, 101, 173-4).
Inserted walling in the abbey church has been suggested to belong to its adaptation for use as the parish church (see e.g. Hilling 2000, 37; Lloyd et al. 2004, 433). This kind of continuing use is noted by contemporary sources at other monastic churches in west Wales e.g. Premonstratensian Talley Abbey, Carms. (Griffiths 1976, 321), but is not recorded at St Dogmaels. Bradshaw was moreover excused from responsibility for the repair of ‘the chancel’ in 1567 (Pritchard 1907, 174-5) and, as rector of St Thomas, it must be the chancel of this church that is meant. So the walling probably belongs instead to a later period, when the abbey buildings were converted for agricultural use (as noted by Fenton 1811, 512, and Lewis 1833, 310-11).
Moreover, George Owen described the abbey as ‘ruined’, in a passage that has long been misunderstood (Pritchard 1907, 174): how could Bradshaw’s mansion be ruinous, soon after its construction and while his successors were still resident there? But it is clear that the description was limited to the abbey church – which, apparently disused, was allowed to fall into disrepair and was extensively robbed.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Felicity Sage of Dyfed Archaeological Trust, and to Dr Kathleen Thompson, Heather James and Prof. Nancy Edwards.
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Websites
http://canmore.org.uk/collection/1228177 (plan of Lindores Abbey).
[1] Henry I’s confirmation is reproduced in full in Dugdale’s Monasticon (Caley et al. 1846, 130). The royal charter was inspected and confirmed at regular intervals throughout the Middle Ages (Cals. Charter Rolls 1257-1300, 355; 1327-41, 214. Cal. Papal Registers 1431-47, 454-5. Cals. Pat. Rolls 1396-99, 141; 1405-08, 196; 1416-22, 2; 1429-36, 120; 1467-77, 465).
[2] Nevertheless, Baring-Gould also referenced the ‘Legend of St Tydecho’, versified in the fifteenth century, which locates Tydecho alongside St Dogmael at his foundation in Pembrokeshire (Baring-Gould and Fisher 1908, 350). The house was recorded as ‘Llandudoch’ in 988, 1091 and 1138 (Jones 1952, 10, 18; Jones 1971, 47, 85; Williams ab Ithel 1860, 41), but the form ‘St Dogmael’ predominates in post-Conquest accounts.
[3] The divisions instead represent the area immediately surrounding the village, which rendered tithes to the abbey, and the region beyond in which the tithes had been acquired by St Davids Cathedral (see RCAHM(W) 1925, 360). The Commissioners also suggested that the Papal licence for an altar, which was requested by a local lord in the fifteenth century, resulted from the demise of the church on the second monastic site (see Cal. Papal Registers 1431-47, 306). The licence however concerns a portable altar, of a kind much employed by gentry families when travelling (ibid., passim).
[4] An archaeological evaluation southeast of the abbey, to the south of the former vicarage (see Fig. 1), was inconclusive: levels had been truncated during the nineteenth century (Murphy 2017, 23), while the trench probably lay beyond the suggested bank.
[5] The earlier date of 1100-08 suggested by, inter alia, Dillwyn Miles (Miles 1997, 10-11), is not favoured here.
[6] Cemais, like its neighbouring lordship of Cilgerran, retained its native Welsh identity and many ecclesiastical traditions long after the Norman Conquest, and into the post-medieval period. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the survival of cults. Poems of praise to St Llawddog, centred on Cilgerran lordship, were still being composed in the fifteenth century (Jones 1984, 102-3), while the cult of St Brynach, based on Nevern, remained active throughout the Reformation (Owen 1892, 272 n. 7; Owen 1897, 509). Native systems of multiple patronage persisted in the region’s churches (Owen 1897, 287-314), while cist-burial continued well into the post-Conquest period (Ludlow 2003, 41-2), and we have seen that nawdd was recognised at St Dogmaels in the fifteenth century.
[7] Contemporary source material is sparse, and no cartulary survives.
[8] Two pilgrimage chapels were recorded in St Dogmaels parish in the sixteenth century, one dedicated to St Dogmael himself, the second to the Celtic St Carannog (Baring-Gould and Fisher 1908, 349; Owen 1897, 509). They appear have been associated with the Brynach cult at Nevern, rather than the abbey.
[9] After the Dissolution, both manor and town were claimed by the Barony of Cemais (Owen 1897, 495-6, 498).
[10] Monastic towns are well-known in England (e.g. Benedictine Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk), while elsewhere in Wales ‘Old Carmarthen’ belonged to the Augustinian priory there (James 1980, 23-5). Other Tironensian town foundations are similarly known, e.g. Arbroath and Kelso in Scotland (Dixon et al. 2002, 2-4; Walker and Ritchie 1987, 121-2).
[11] Cardigan town existed by 1136 (Forester 1854, 252).
[12] Comparison with Carmarthen may also provide an alternative explanation for High Street’s curving line. Settlement outside Carmarthen Priory, with similar burgage plots, resulted in a ‘bulge’ in the alignment of the Roman Road line (James 1980, 24-5; James 2003, 17). So while a circular enclosure at St Dogmaels is favoured, it remains possible that the High Street originally ran alongside the north wall of the post-Conquest precinct.
[13] The precinct boundary itself has gone but has been revealed, in part, through excavation (Cachart 2000, 12).
[14] And today, it lies within its own churchyard and burial ground.
[15] Rebuilding the chancel was recommended in 1684 (RCAHM(W) 1925, 358 n. 1), but may not have been undertaken.
[16] The monastic mill-stream, southeast of the abbey buildings, supplied at least two corn mills (Caley et al. 1846, 132; Owen 1897, 508).
[17] The Royal Commission Inventory mistakenly suggested that it was instead the chapel of St Julian (RCAHM(W) 1925, 360), in confusion with St Silin, the original dedication of St Dogmaels’s grange chapel at Mynachlogddu, Pembs. (Owen 1897, 509).
[18] The graves were undated, but need not be early medieval: cist-burials revealed at the abbey’s dependent parish church of Eglwyswrw, and at Cilgerran parish church (both Pembs.), were dateable to the thirteenth century (Ludlow 2003, 41-2).
[19] Culminating in 1538, when Becket was officially unsainted by the king.
[20] A ‘Capel St Thomas’ formerly lay in Nevern parish (Owen 1897, 509), but it is not known which Thomas was venerated.
[21] A Master Roger, rector of ‘St Dogmaels’, died in 1253 (Davies 1946, 389). A rector would imply the presence of a parish church. However, the passage places St Dogmaels within the lordship of Pebidiog, rather than Cemais, making it clear that this is a scribal error for St Dogwells, a parish that was held by St Davids Cathedral (the same misidentification occurs in Cal. Fine Rolls 1272-1307, 149).
[22] It is significant that the Taxatio does include the monastic parish churches at Kidwelly and St Clears (Carms.), and Pembroke (Astle et al. 1802, 272-3, 275).