Introduction

The sacred places of Wales are found everywhere in the principality; some of them date back a very long time. The huge stone monuments dotted hither and yon around the landscape -- the neolithic chambered tombs -- are known in Welsh as cromlechi. Some of these are almost 5,000 years old, as old as the first pyramids of Egypt. As burial places, they were sacred to the people who built them; it is believed that they were also centers of religion and its accompanying rituals. Two of the most well known uncovered tombs are found near Cardiff: Tinkinswood and St. Lythan's. Another one, Maen Ceti or Arthur's Stone, is found on the Gower peninsular, near Swansea. Farther west,in a mountain pasture overlooking the little coastal town of Newport, Dyfed is the finest megalithic tomb in Wales: Pentre Ifan. Three more of note are found on the island county of Anglesey at Plas Newydd, Llugwy, and Trefignath. The covered tombs worth visiting are Ty Isaf, in the Black Mountains; Parc Cwm, in the Gower Peninsular; Capel Garmon, near Betws-y-Coed, in Gwynedd; and Bryn Celli Ddu and Barclodiad Y Gawres, both in Anglesey.

As well as constructing burial chambers, the ancient people of Wales built other monuments that we assume to have had religious purposes: the cursus and the henge, the first consisting of two parallel banks with outside ditches, and the second a circular bank or ditch enclosing one or more circles of timber or stone. Little is known about the people who built these monuments, but around 2000 BC, another group of people began to arrive in Britain ushering in what we now call the Bronze Age. They buried their dead in round barrows, leaving behind skillfully worked tools, weapons, household utensils and ornaments to inform us of their daily lives. Their stone circles, probably open-air temples, are found scattered throughout the British Isles. Of these, Wales has nothing to compare with Stonehenge and Avebury (both in Wiltshire, England), and those that do survive are not easy to find. Near Brecon are Nant Tarw and Mynydd Bach, both consisting of double stone circles. A single circle of twenty stones is located at Cerrig Duon, also in Powys. One more Bronze Age circle of some size, inappropriately named Druid's Circle, is found at Penmaenmawr, Gwynedd.

The Bronze Age in Britain lasted a long time, from about 2000 to 700 BC. It was followed by the Iron Age, during which a steady trickle of people began to enter Britain from the Continent. These were the Celts, the ancestors of the present-day Welsh. They brought their Brythonic language with them, and wherever they settled, they built their hill forts, of which three impressive remains are found in Wales, though none of these qualify, as far as we know, as sacred sites: Breiddin Hill, in Powys; Tre'r Ceiri, in the Llyn Peninsular; and Caer y Twr, on Holy Island, Anglesey.

Britain was then settled by another group of Celts we call the Belgae, and it was these people who introduced cremation to the island. They worshipped many gods, and called their priests Druids. On the way to visit Pentre Ifan, in Pembrokeshire, at Castell Henllys, you can see a reconstruction of a fort and settlement that gives a good idea of the way Iron Age people built their huts and farmed their fields.

In the first century AD much of Celtic Britain was conquered by Rome, and the old Celtic gods of Britain were brought indoors from the Oak groves to be worshipped in classical-style temples. By the second century, missionaries from Gaul had introduced Christianity into the island, and the pagan temples were converted into churches. By 3l4, when British bishops were summoned to the council of Arles, an organized Christian Church seems to have been established in most of Britain. By the fourth century, a diocesan structure had been set up, many districts having come under the pastoral care of a bishop.

The first monasteries were probably established in Wales shortly before 500, spreading rapidly during the next century to Ireland from where missionaries brought the faith back to northern Britain. In this period, numerous Celtic saints were adopted by the Christian Church, the earliest being St. Dyfrig (Dubricius) whose churches are mainly situated in the area served by the Wye River on the present day border of Wales and England. One of Dyfrig's disciples was St.Illtud, who became the first abbot of Llantwit Major (Llanilltyd Fawr) in the Vale of Glamorgan. It was there that St Samson of Dol was educated, whose Life is the earliest of a Welsh saint and who became the most illustrious saint of the Church in Britanny. It is in the period following the arrival of St. Augustine in 597 from the Continent, however, that most of our cathedrals were established though we will be visiting sacred sites that date long before that.