The mature copper beech by St Mary’s church is dark and heavy with foliage, moving gently in the warm morning breeze and casting welcome shade. Turf paths between the gravestones have been neatly mown, and many of the kempt memorials are marked with fresh flowers. Between the rows, a large hare slowly moves away from me, not panicked but just ensuring its escape route to the lane is unimpeded. It settles, watching me while soaking up the sun, its rump against a gravestone.
Small and stone-built, the church of St Mary sits in a broad valley, on a lane that branches from a minor road, a few yards from the still youthful Afon Teifi. The site is remote, the lane eventually losing itself in the hills, yet this was once a place of significant activity – the southern boundary is shared with the Cistercian abbey of Strata Florida, or what remains of it.
Founded around 1164, the abbey was the core of an important community for several hundred years, eventually falling foul of Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries, although its glory was long past by then. Only the Romanesque western arch of the abbey remains intact, but tiled floors and chapels give some idea of the scale, power and influence that it once had.
The churchyard of St Mary’s is old, large and irregular, but still the chosen resting place for many local people, and those who have wished to be returned here. It is perhaps significant that – while the Cistercians, with their enabling infrastructure of farming, forestry and stone-working, have long departed – the community purpose of this quiet corner still remains after a thousand years.
Looking past the ancient yew tree, which might mark the grave of the – sometimes lewd – medieval poet Dafydd ap Gwilym, the sharply ridged hills above the Teifi Pools stand out against the sky. To north and south, wooded slopes wrap the valley floor, giving a degree of shelter that will be welcome when the winter storms arrive.
The hare has gone, leaving quietly and unobserved. For now, it is time for me to do the same.
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