Bangor Cathedral

Bangor (pop. c.l2,000) is completely dominated by the university buildings high on a ridge overlooking the town. Down in the city center, however, shyly hiding from view is Bangor Cathedral, occupying the site of one of the earliest monastic settlements in all of Britain. The word Bangor comes from the Welsh for a wattle fence, for it was such a fence that surrounded the monastic community founded here by St. Deiniol in the year 525. Deiniol was consecrated Bishop in 546 and his church became a cathedral.

The cathedral itself merits highly on our list of sacred places, for it may be the oldest in Britain in continuous use as such. Four bishops of Bangor became Archbishops of Canterbury. Archbishop Baldwin preached the Crusade here in ll88.

The present unpretentious building, or what is left of it after centuries of neglect and numerous fires, was erected by Bishop David between ll20 and ll39. Much damage was sustained during the Welsh wars against Edward I and again in l402 at the hands of Welsh patriot Owen Glendower's army. It wasn't until the late l5th century that extensive rebuilding took place, lots of which was again damaged or neglected during the English Civil Wars. In the nineteenth century, the ubiquitous Sir Gilbert Scott was called upon to supervise a drastic restoration which resulted in the building we see today--a Victorian creation completely hiding any vestiges of the original edifice.

Yet some items of interest remain. The cathedral's greatest treasure is the late thirteenth century Anian Pontifical, a service book for Bishops, set to music. Inside the church we can find a set of dog tongues (a set is also found at Clynnog Church), used to remove noisy or unruly dogs from church services; the Mostyn Christ of l5l8 said to have been hidden by the Catholic Mostyn family during the Reformation; and a twelfth-century tomb once thought to have been that of Prince Owain Gwynedd, one of the few rulers of an independent Wales. He is one of three princes of Gwynedd buried here. Two murals depict the sacred places of our pilgrimage -- the six cathedrals of Wales and also notable men of the Welsh Church from Dubricius (Dyfrig) to the first Archbishop of Wales, A.G. Edwards. There is also a memorial to poet Goronwy Owen, who left his native Wales to teach at William and Mary College in Virginia in the mid-eighteenth century.

A very pleasant, and most unusual feature of the exterior of the cathedral is the Bishop's Garden, containing the Biblical garden which is planted on one side with flowers and shrubs traditionally associated with the medieval church. On the other side, planted chronologically according to the order in which they are mentioned, are found examples of all trees, shrubs and plants in the Bible and able to survive the climate of this northern part of Britain.

Leaving Bangor, our journey now takes us eastwards, along the shores of the Menai. The Snowdon Massif is on our right, and the isle of Anglesey to our left, accessible by Telford's suspension bridge.. By modern highway, we skirt the mountains and the sea and travel the Welsh Riviera, a string of holiday resorts much frequented by the English summer hordes. Before we reach our next major destination, we will take a short detour for the little church of Llanelian-yn-Rhos, situated two miles inland from the resort town of Colwyn Bay.

At Llanelian, (the Church of St. Elian), we find a spot that is sacred in a very special way, for it was here that pilgrims came not to be cured or to pray for those who were sick, but to curse those they considered their enemies. Even though the spring is said to have issued from the ground when the 6th Century St. Elian prayed for water to drink, the well here was known not as a holy one, but as a malignant one. In the nineteenth Century, it became especially known throughout Wales as a cursing well. Visitors would write the name of their intended victim on paper through which a crooked pin was then pushed. The keeper of the well would then write the victim's name on a pebble or a lead slate which was dropped into the water.

It was a lucrative business for the custodians, for a steady supply of visitors kept the job busy right up to the early years of the present century. One well keeper, Sarah Hughes, is said to have earned about three hundred pounds a year. She received a nice income from those who came to curse and an even nicer one from those who came to have the curses lifted. The imprisonment of John Evans, in l854 for "taking money by means of deception," eventually put a stop to the practice, and the well was drained and then hidden by a local clergyman in order to dissuade the members of his congregation casting spells on one another.

As a place of pilgrimage, however, especially to patriotic Welshmen, the Church of St.Elian deserves to be better known as the burial place of Ednyfed Fechan, chief minister of Llewelyn the Great (Llywelyn Fawr). Llewelyn's mastery at dealing with the English crown had brought a large measure of self-autonomy to his Welsh kingdoms and great prestige in the courts of Europe, but his death in l240 ended all hopes that Wales would remain independent from England. Ednyfed's descendants, nevertheless, would become great landowners in Wales and the ancestral family of the Tudors of Penmynydd.

We now leave Llanelian to swing further inland into the still very-Welsh Vale of Clwyd (Dyffryn Clwyd) at the head of which is the tiny town of St. Asaph (Llanelwy), pleasantly situated alongside the River Elwy. On our short journey, we pass by the little village of St. George (Llan Sain Iôr), where the local tradition has it that this is where St. George slew the dragon.