WOLF HWYL II - Neath Abbey

As a footnote to the preceding blog Richard Cromwell, the character played by Joss Porter in the BBC adaptation of Wolf Hall, was born by 1502 in the parish of Llanishen, Glamorganshire.  He was the great-grandfather of Oliver Cromwell, and one time owner of Neath Abbey. He was the eldest son of Morgan Williams an ‘aspiring Welsh lawyer’ who moved to Putney and set up as an innkeeper and brewer. Williams was married to Katherine, sister of Thomas Cromwell and both Morgan and Richard would benefit financially through the familial relationship with Cromwell, the younger taking his uncles surname.

Sir Richard Cromwell, a soldier of some note, was introduced to the Court of Henry VIII and was active in the dissolution of the monasteries. Among them was Neath Abbey which was surrendered to Thomas Cromwell in 1539. The site and demesnes at Neath were first leased to Richard Cromwell who then bought the site and demesnes along with a large part of the abbey’s other estates in South Wales for the sum of £731.0s.7 ½d in 1542. The same year he sold on the grange and chapel at Nash, lands in St Brides, Wick and Marcross and the vicarage of St Donats to Sir Thomas Stradling. The Grange at Sker was sold to Christopher Turberville. 

In the course of the 16^th century the site and demesnes at Neath were acquired by Sir John Herbert, second secretary of state to Elizabeth I and James I who rebuilt the former abbot’s house into a large country manor house. (See preceding blog for The Herberts). The remains of that Elizabethan house form the south elevations of the remaining 'abbey ruins'. In the absence of a male heir the estate passed to the Doddington family and then to the Hoby family. In 1699 Mrs Hoby died, and her daughter Katherine, who was married to Griffith Rice of Dinefwr, Carmarthenshire, inherited the bulk of the property. 

The estate remained in the hands of the barons Dynevor until it was sold in 1946 but during the C18th the abbey fell on very hard times. By 1731 it was being used for copper smelting and subsequently as part of the nearby Neath Abbey Ironworks. The Tennant Canal was driven through its south side in the 1820’s and Brunel ran the Vale of Neath railway on an embankment along what would have been the north side of the abbey church in the 1850’s. Various copper works were built on the adjacent river bank through the C18^th including the Mines Royal and Cheadle  It remained in a state of extreme dereliction half buried in industrial detritus which was cleared by volunteers in the 1920’s and 30’s.

Through the 1950’s and 1960’s the town rubbish tip was located across from the abbey on the canal bank. For a short time the ground on the west side of the abbey was used as a greyhound track and then a motorcycle speedway in the early 1960’s. That area is now covered with the Neath Abbey industrial estate facing the A465 dual carriageway and a large used car showroom.

Described by John Leland just before its dissolution as ‘the fairest abbey of all Wales’ it has remained behind a Ministry of Works fence. The setting of the abbey ruins remains an utter disgrace but they are occasionally put to profitable use by BBC Wales when they need a noble ruin completely untroubled by visitors. It should not be beyond the limited wit of Cadw and local planners to formulate a long term plan to incorporate the abbey ruins into a programme of work which would embrace local marshland, the adjacent River Clydach and the Tennant Canal into an attractive local amenity.

This could perhaps be done by the 500^th anniversary of its dissolution in 2039. It would be best not to wait until 2112 and the millennium of its foundation as an abbey…….