Llanllugan Abbey

Llanllugan Abbey was a monastery of Cistercian nuns, one of only two women's monasteries in Wales, located at Llanllugan, Powys, Wales. It was founded around 1188 on land donated by Maredudd ap Robert, Lord of Cedewain, and was founded as a dependency of the Cistercian monks at the Abbey of Strata Marcella. The former monastery church survives as the parish church of Llanllugan. However, the site of the abbey buildings remains uncertain: they might have been in a meadow 200 metres to the south of the church.

The Princes of Wales founded a number of Cistercian monasteries in that period, which were independent of the ones founded in Norman England, at a time Norman forces were pushing their way into that region. As a result, these houses were nominally allied with the native Welsh nobility.

The abbey is famous in Welsh literature from a poem by the leading poet Dafydd ap Gwilym entitled Cyrchu Lleian (English: Wooing a nun): Dafydd's lover, Morfudd, may have been consigned there by her father to keep her out of harm's way. It has been suggested that the abbey was small: only four nuns and an abbess were recorded in 1377, and it might have been extinct by the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

Dafydd's poem (written before the Black Death) suggests there were some 60 nuns at that time; however the figure should be taken as poetic license, as the two Welsh communities of nuns rarely seem to have had more than a dozen members each.

External links

• CPAT "Montgomeryshire Churches Survey" [1]