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The History of
Neath Abbey
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Wales
Tourist Board Accredited Accommodation
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 The
Norman Conquest had far reaching consequences on all aspects of life in
Britain. By
the mid 1120s, Earl Robert of Gloucester (d. 1147) had established the
western frontier of the Norman lordship of Glamorgan on the banks of the
river Neath. He divided the lordship of Glamorgan amongst his
knights, giving each knight an allotted portion to govern and
maintain. To Sir Richard de Granville he gave the westernmost
portion, the land between the rivers Neath and Tawe. It is said
that this was the most dangerous part of Glamorgan, as the Normans
suffered frequent and ferocious attacks from the native people. De
Granville built a castle on the western bank of the River Neath to consolidate his
gains. In 1129 he chose to grant his Neath fee
to the monks at the abbey of Holy Trinity at Savigny in western
Normandy.Towards the end of De Granville's charter - which included grants of land, meadows, mills, and the chapel of his castle - it was made clear that the gifts were intended to endow the abbey. Savingy was to send out its second daughter colony accross the channel, with Abbot Richard (d.1145) and his twelve monks arriving at Neath in October 1130. Seventeen years later, when all Savigniac houses merged with the Cistercian order, Neath became part of the celebrated 'White Monk' community. In common with early Cictercian ideals, life and worship were to be charachterized by a desire for solitude and simplicity. The abbey's economy was to be highly dependent upon the direct and 
intensive cultivation of agricultural land.Richard de Granville's endowment included some 8,000 acres (3,240ha) of 'waste' situated between the Neath and Tawe rivers. From this base, the moks built up a scattered estate in Glamorgan, in the lordship of Gower, and also in Somerset. But these lands were far too dispersed to be managed efficiently. Indeed, such was the precarious position in which the community found itself in the 1190s, careful thought was given to moving the entire abbey to the site of its property at Exford in north-west Somerset. The plan was eventually abandoned and the monks began a concerted effort to consolidate their holdings nearer to home. Despite a series of bitter land disputes fought with the neighbouring Cistercian house at Margam, by the end of the thirteenth century Neath had become one of the richest monasteries in Wales with an annual income of about £236. At first, the abbey's lands were organized into distinctive and compact farms, known as granges. Worked by a devout army of lay brothers, the grange was the key to the early success of Cistercian land management. In a survey of 1291, the Neath monks were recorded as farming an arable estate of more than 5,000 acres (2,224ha). Their livestock numbers included some 220 cattle and almost 5,000 sheep; they also held extensive urban holdings in the boroughs of Caerleon, Cardiff, Cowbridge and Neath.  Damage inflicted on these estates during the Welsh rebellions of 1314-16 was said to have left the monks 'plundered of their goods....their house devastated and ruined'. Further difficulties were to contribute to the changing economic fortunes of the abbey during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The ideals of grange farming were gradually abandoned, lands were leased out, and Neath beacame increasingly dependent upon a rentier economy. But in the early Tudor period, the conventual life at the house was to reach new heights under its last abbot, Leyshon Thomas. In 1535, shortly before the suppression, the abbey's annual income was assessed at £132. Neath was finally dissolved in 1539, with Abbot Leyshon and the seven remaining monks each receiving pensions. Three years later the aspiring Tudor magnate, Sir Richard Williams alias Cromwell (d. 1545), was allowed to purchase the site along with a large part of the abbey's Glamorgan estates. Parts of the former monastic buildings were transformed into a splendid mansion, which was acquired before 1600 by Sir John Herbert (d. 1617). The property passed through Sir John's heiress to the Dodingtons, and finally to Sir Philip Hobby (d. 1678), whose wife may have been the last to occupy the house. By 1731, some of the buildings were in use for copper smelting, and further industrial developments were to follow. Furnaces were built into parts of the west range and workers were accommodated in makeshift ladgings hacked from the Tudor mansion. After years of neglect, the site was cleared of debris and excavated between 1924 and 1935. In 1949, the abbey was placed in the care of the State and is now maintained by Cadw: Welsh Historic Monuments. |
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