Heol-y-Plwcca & City Road: Growing Up Where Two Welsh Martyrs Were Killed

St Philip Evans

I still remember to this day coming across a small plaque on a wall at the very bottom end of Crwys Road, where it met Mackintosh Place, Albany Road, City Road and Richmond Road, quite a thoroughfare in Roath, Cardiff.

I believe it was on the wall of a branch of Nat West Bank which stood on the corner between Crwys and Richmond Road - but I might be wrong there (lap it up, it may be the last time ;-) ).

Anyhow, this plaque struck me because it told me that I was standing on the spot where two Catholic Saints were martyred for their Faith.

It seemed weird to read that in the middle of urban Cardiff with cars whizzing by in all manner of directions (a five way junction is a startling place by anyone's reckoning).

Here was the place where St John Lloyd and St Philip Evans met their fate on the scaffold, merely for being Catholic priests in Wales. That is how terrible (in its real sense) those penal times were, when men could be killed for offering the Mass to those who were practising the religion that their forefathers had, for many generations.

You might even say that Welshmen had witnessed the Sacrifice of the Mass since the time of the Roman Empire, since circa the third Century A.D.

Maybe I was crass in my ignorance not to have hitherto known this historical reality, but to discover that two Saints had died on that spot really made an impression on me as a teenager (yes, I have a good memory, before anyone quips in!)..

The B4261 is City Road, the A469 is Albany Road

So it was the other day on researching some part of Cardiff's history I fell upon a reference to the Saints being martyred at a place called Pwllhalog.

This struck me as strange, as I quite literally grew up just around the corner from the spot where the martyrs were hung. Yet I had never heard of Pwllhalog as a place.

I know enough schoolboy Welsh to know that Pwll means Pool, but more than that? Just lake Manuel in Fawlty Towers I had to state "I know nothing."

On researching this further, it seems that the place name may well be Pwll Halog and translates as Unhallowed Pool.

According to the Real Cardiff site, City Road used to be called Heol-y-Plwcca:

Up until the middle of last century it was known as Heol-y-Plwcca after the gallows field at its northern end. Here, in a plot known as 'the Cut Throats', more or less where the Road has its junction with Albany, stood the town gibbet. Nearby were plots called Cae Budr (the defiled field), Plwcca Halog (the unhallowed plot), and Pwll Halog (the unhallowed pool). Today they've got side streets built across them and are happily called Strathnairn, Glenroy and Keppoch. The grimness has been vanquished, buried under backgarden clay and foundation, forgotten.

 According to the site/page Walk Down City Road:

City Road used to be called Plwcca Lane.

Plwcca means reeds or rushes. Before the houses were built this part of Roath was rough scrub land. People used to come to collect the rushes to make baskets.

In 1829, the building that is now the Mackintosh Institute was a mansion out in the countryside. It was called Roath Castle because the tops of its walls looked like the turrets on a castle.

In those days, City Road was called Castle Road because it led to Roath Castle.

In 1905, Cardiff was granted the status of city rather than simply a town and Castle Road became City Road.

So we are left to wonder did Heol-y-Plwcca gain its name from the rushes that people gathered there, or from the gallows where the Saints met their end? Plwcca seems to mean plot and/or scrubland, with Halog (unhallowed) seeming to be the part of the name(s) from the area linked to the death of the guilty and possibly the burial-site on unconsecrated ground of 'criminals.'

I wonder if the 'unhallowed plot' refers to a burial plot where the Saints may well have ended up, discarded as common criminals by the government officials that oversaw their martyrdom?

If so (and I realise I am taking a little poetic licence here) might the fact that "today they've got side streets built across them and are happily called Strathnairn...." mean that the street I spent most of my youngest years on (the same Strathnairn near the City Road end), be at least near the place of their martyrdom, if not even closer to the site of their burial?

I have found one reference to their being hung, drawn and quartered (a particularly brutal manner of death - the fate of William Wallace in the film Braveheart), but other information seems scanty, so I simply do not know if they ended up being scattered around Britain as a warning, or put in unmarked graves locally.

But how fascinating to find out more of the background of Heol-y-Plwcca, which would become City Road.

When I was up my Nan's, Anne Huzzey's house in Pentwyn a few years before she passed away, she told me about when she was young, growing up on Strathnairn Street and her Uncle Walter would come home from working on the railways and send her around to City Road to buy fish and chips.

It's funny that two Welsh priests found martyrdom at the end of City Road, where my Nan bought fish and chips, where I spent my very earliest, formative years and later would return to drink in the Roath Park - a pub which made it into one of the tabloid papers for being in the top ten "worst pubs in Britain." I still remember starting a tour of Cardiff's pubs on my 18th birthday at that very establishment.

As a youngster in the late 70s I remember City Road being full of car dealerships (seems weird now) and someone once told me it was in the Guinness Book of Records for having the world's greatest concentration of car dealers in a road. I still don't know if that was an urban myth.

Isn't it weird how one single road can change so much and encapsulate so much?

From Heol-y-Plwcca and the Martyrdom of two Saints to City Road, take-aways and allegedly one of the worst pubs in Britain.

Life rolls on...

Medieval Cardiff: Roath Tewkesbury, Roath Keynsham, Roath Dog Field - and the Benedictines

A Pre-Reformation Welsh Church in all its beauty.

I am very grateful to the vicar (Rev Paul Williams - though not, he tells me, a Welshman) and the archivist of Tewkesbury Abbey (in temporary tenure of the Anglicans) both of whom took the time to write to me after I contacted them with a query regarding St Margaret's of Antioch in Roath, being a daughter Chapel of the Benedictine Order based at the Abbey in the Medieval period.

The following kind email is reproduced in full (with typos) and contains many nuggets of info, as regards Roath's relationship with both Cardiff Castle and Tewkesbury Abbey.

It's clear that the Benedictine monks would have seen to the spiritual needs of the inhabitants of Roath and received tithes from the tenants.

What would be interesting to see is the partition of Roath into "Roath Tewkesbury," "Roath Keynsham," and "Roath Dog Field" as described below (the former two monastic lands and the latter manorial) especially in their relation to later maps and modern Roath.

Still, I'm pleased to find out I grew up on Benedictine land. It ties in Roath with huge swathes of European and Catholic history (see the link at the end of this post to read how the Benedictine Order converted Germany to Catholicism).

Dear Gareth

Fr Paul has sent me a copy of your email in the hope that I may be able to find some information regarding a connection between Roath and Tewkesbury Abbey.  Sadly very few documents regarding the abbey before the dissolution have survived, but we do have the account of the commissioners of Henry VIII who catalogued the possessions of the abbey at the time of its dissolution.  Unfortunately this is in Latin, and I afraid that my Latin is very limited and now extremely rusty.  James Bennett in his History of Tewkesbury gives a summary of the properties  mentioned in the account, and this includes ”Cardiff and Roth – Rents of assize of free tenants, Rents of customary tenants And Perquisites of Courts”.

I passed a copy of your email to a friend of mine who has a very considerable knowledge of the history of Tewkesbury abbey, and he sent me the following: -

St Margaret Roath founded by Robert Fitz Hamon in 1100, known as the chapel of Raht.  It was a Chapel of Ease to the Priory of St Mary at Cardiff.  Apparently its pasture lands were used as the Home Farm of the Castle of Cardiff, supplying meat, butter, cheese and fish.  St Mary and St Margaret were given to Tewkesbury , which provided clergy, wax and wine for their us.  Only the chapel at Roath received them.  In return Tewkesbury received it’s tithes.  Lands attached to the original manor of Roath were vast and extended far beyond the boundaries of the Parish of Roath, taking in parts of Llanedeycn, Lisvane and even Whitchurch (spellings may be incorrect!).  During the 12^th and 13^th centuries the manor of Roath was divided into three parts.  Large areas came under the juristiction of the Abbeys of Tewkesbury and Keynsham, and were names Roath Tewkesbury and Roath Keynsham.  The remaining land came under the direction of the Lords of Glamorgan and were known as Roath Dog Field.

You may have already discovered all of the from the internet, but I am afraid that I have been unable to find anything else from our archives.

With Best Wishes

Pat Webley

Honorary Abbey Archivist

 By Llanedeycn I assume the friend of the archivist means Llanedeyrn, a current suburb (though some would describe it as a series of 60s-style sprawling estates) of Cardiff.

I have found one history of Tewkesbury which mentions various Chapels in Wales (which must include St Margaret's). Click on the second link below to read more. Here's some of the pertinent quotes (the footnotes can be accessed at the original site):

Tewkesbury profited by the conquests of Norman lords in Wales and received before 1103, amongst other benefices, the parish church of St. Mary of Cardiff with eight dependent chapels. (fn. 12) 

In 1109 Abbot Gerald resigned and returned to Winchester. (fn. 13) In 1123 the church was dedicated by Theulf, bishop of Worcester. (fn. 14) About 1137, Robert, earl of Gloucester, founded the priory of St. James at Bristol as a dependent cell to Tewkesbury, (fn. 15) and he is also said to have been the founder of the cell at Cardiff. (fn. 16)...

Abbot Peter was engaged in a number of lawsuits in defence of the rights of the house. (fn. 19) In 1221 owing to disturbances in Wales, he was obliged to recall the monks from the cell of Cardiff and let the priory on lease for some years. (fn. 20)  

Of interest is material from the Valor Eccles. (Rec. Com.), ii, 471-86. The Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1535 was the first book of reports commissioned by Henry VIII, controlled by he hated Thomas Cromwell. I do not know if the second volume (ii) was of the same year, but the report from Tewkesbury would have happened prior to its dissolution in 1540. This is what the royal commissioners had to say of Tewkesbury:

The monastery, including the three cells, was surrendered on 9 January, 1540. (fn. 61) It is probable that the number of monks then in the house was about thirty-seven; thirty-six were included in the pension list, (fn. 62) and of these a prior and two monks lived at each of the cells. John Wakeman, the abbot, received a pension of £266 13s. 4d., and drew it until September, 1541, when he was consecrated to the newly-founded see of Gloucester. The prior got £16 a year, the priors of the cells of Deerhurst and St. James, Bristol, £13 6s. 8d., the prior of Cranbourne and one other monk £10, two of them £8, another £7, and the remaining twenty-seven £6 13s. 4d. each. Wages were paid up to date to 144 servants. (fn. 63)

The possessions (fn. 64) of the monastery included the manor and borough of Tewkesbury, the manors of Coln St. Dennis, Compton Parva, Preston-upon-Stour, Alvescot, Welford, Washbourne, Prescot, Gotherington, Tredington, Fiddington, Oxenton, Walton Cardiff, Forthampton, Ampney Crucis, Hosebridge, Lemington, Church Stanway in Gloucestershire, the manor of Pull Court, a moiety of the manor of Queenhill, the manors of Bushley, Pirton, Ashton Keynes and Leigh, in Worcestershire, the manor of Burnet in Somerset, the manor of Taynton in Oxfordshire; in Dorsetshire the manors of Cranbourne, Chettle, Upwimborne, Boveridge with Estworth, Tarrant Monachorum; in Sussex the manors of Kingston and Wyke; in Devon the manors of Loosebeare and Midlande; rents in Gloucester, Cardiff and other places; and the rectories of Tewkesbury, Fiddington, Walton-Cardiff, Aston-upon-Carron, Southwick and Tredington, Compton Parva, Preston-uponStour, Washbourn, Forthampton, Thornbury, Ampney, Fairford, Eastleach, Wotton-underEdge, Marshfield in Gloucestershire, Sherston and Aldington in Worcestershire, Taynton in Oxfordshire, Great Marlow and Chetelhampton in Buckinghamshire, St. Wenne and Crewenne in Cornwall, Tarrant Monachorum in Dorset, Kingston in Sussex, in Wales Llantwit, Llanblethian, Llantrisant, Penmark with the chapel of St. Donat and Cardiff, and tithes and pensions in a number of other churches in England and Wales, and the priories of Deerhurst, St. James Bristol, and Cranbourne.

So no specific mention is made of St Margaret's in Cardiff/Roath but "other churches in England and Wales" are mentioned. Could the "Chapel of... Cardiff" be St Margaret's? Or might the monks have let the Chapel go to another order prior to the Reformation?

One last very interesting site (well worth visiting and perusing!) is Monastic Wales, whose page on the Benedictines has their Priories in Cardiff, Kidwelly, Carmarthen and other places, but sadly no mention of the daughter chapel in Roath.

According to the Monastic Wales site the Cardiff Priory was dissolved in 1403. Their timeline goes:

pre 1106: Foundation - Robert fitz Hamon granted the church of St Mary with its eight dependent chapels to Tewkesbury Abbey, to establish a cell for five monks. [2 sources]
1173x83: Rebuilding and re-dedication - The church was rebuilt and re-dedicated to St Mary and St Thomas the Martyr. [1 source]
1220: Community flees - The community escaped the turbulent conditions in Wales and took refuge at Tewkesbury Abbey. [4 sources]
1233: Administration - The prior of Cardiff returned from Tewkesbury to administer the priory's holdings but the weir on the Taff was leased out for five years. [2 sources]
c.1291: Wealth - The priory’s holdings were assessed at £20 for the Taxatio Ecclesiastica.  [2 sources]
c.1300: Patronage - Patronage of the house was vested in the earls of Gloucester; it then passed to the Despensers and thereafter to the Crown.  [1 source]
1403: Dissolution - The house was dissolved although the site may have been abandoned prior to this. [2 sources]
c.1403: Destruction - The priory was sacked by the rebel, Owain Glyn Dŵr (d. c. 1416). [1 source]

If the main priory (where the original 5 monks were based in 1106) was dissolved, one wonders if the Church of St Margaret (which stood as a Norman church until it was replaced in Victorian times) came under the auspices of a parish priest or another religious order in the 130-odd years from 1403 until the Reformation.

So we have found out a good deal more, but have a way still to go!

Link:
A History of the Benedictine Order
The Monks at Tewkesbury
English Monastic Archives: Tewkesbury
Monastic Wales

When Roath was Rural, 1886

This map of Roath in 1886 shows Albany Road (unnamed on this map) running through the middle (West to East, ending as it still does at Roath Court).

Wellfield road as yet does not exist, but where it will run is written "Fynnon Bren" (though the last name is unclear) - fynnon being 'well' in Welsh.

Roath brook runs to the north, almost parallel to, Albany Road, though the gardens that would eventually run along it aren't present (presumably put there once the roads to the north and south of the Brook were built (including Alma Road, where I grew up).

Oakfield Street and Partridge Road (where school friends lived) can be seen at the bottom of the map. Where the small dark word Roath is written, you can see Roath Court (now the site of the Roath Court Funeral Home) and just across the road is St Margaret's Church (recently rebuilt by the Marquis of Bute).

The original Norman-built St Margaret's Church was a daughter chapel of Tewkesbury Abbey and so would have been serviced by the Benedictine Monks until the monastery was dissolved in 1540.

The overwhelming picture of Roath from this map is the rural nature (Albany Road surrounded by fields!) but the creeping urbanisation of the large houses on and off the Newport and City Roads.

For more history visit: Penylan & Roath

For history on Tewkesbury Abbey visit: Tewkesbury Abbey

St Margaret's of Antioch, Roath, Cardiff

The Churches of Roath, the area of Cardiff where I grew up are -- like so many if we take time off to look at them -- full of history and beauty.

A church on the site of St Margaret of Antioch's dates back to 1100. Despite the white-washers and vandals of the Reformation, much has lasted or been restored in a traditional style (note the vicars belonged to the Oxford Movement - the 'Anglo-Catholic' group at one time led by the future Cardinal Newman, and the Marquess of Bute who had the church rebuilt was himself a Catholic).

As their website says:

The church of St Margaret of Antioch, the parish church of Roath, Cardiff, is an interesting one. 

There was a chapel here – ‘the Chapel of Raht’ – soon after 1100, founded by the Norman Lord Robert Fitzhamon, as a Chapel of Ease to his Priory Church of St Mary in Cardiff. A little whitewashed building, thick-walled and low, served the needs of this ancient hamlet, inhabited since Roman times, and now, for the Normans, the home farm for the castle, its pastures supplying meat, fish, butter and cheese.

St Mary’s and its chapels were given by Fitzhamon to his monastic foundation of Tewkesbury Abbey, which provided clergy, wine and wax to the chapel of Roath until the Reformation, and in return received its tithes. The ghost of a long-dead Benedictine chaplain is said to haunt the church to this day! 

In 1766, John Stuart, son of former Prime Minister the Earl of Bute, married Charlotte Jane Windsor, the heiress to the Welsh lands of the Herbert family. Through this marriage he acquired Cardiff Castle and vast tracts of land throughout Glamorgan. In 1792, he bought a parcel of land called the Friars Estate, which included the living of the Parish of Roath, and when his wife Charlotte died in 1800, he built a family burial chapel or mausoleum here, adjoining the chancel of the church, and with space for 48 coffins. This was intended to be the resting place of his family for generations to come.

In 1839, the second Marquess of Bute, his grandson, opened Cardiff’s first dock, and this, together with the canal and the railway, led to Cardiff’s becoming a major port, the iron and coal of the Glamorgan valleys exported all over the world. The local population boomed as a result of this industrial growth, and the little church in Roath was by then too small to cater for the needs of the people.

In 1868, the old church was demolished and the third Marquess, now aged 21 and a Roman Catholic, brought in local architect John Prichard, restorer of Llandaff Cathedral, to build a state-of-the-art Gothic church. The new church opened, to great acclaim, in 1870, though without Prichard’s planned tower and spire.

Ten years later, the Marquess rebuilt the Mausoleum, incorporating it into the body of the church. Because of the family’s Catholicism, no further burials took place.

In the later years of the 19th century, Roath was a flagship parish in the Anglican Communion, staffed by young energetic clergy inspired by the Oxford Movement, and taking Word and Sacrament to the people of this corner of Cardiff, ‘more like a colonial town than anywhere else in Britain’!

Fr FW Puller brought in leading architect GF Bodley to build the beautiful daughter church of St German’s, and its school and clergy house. His successor, Charles Smythies, a great favourite with the working men, went on to become Bishop of East Africa, where he died labouring in the mission field. Schools and churches sprang up in Roath at this time, some of which have now closed. But St Margaret’s is still the mother church of the parish, with, today, St Anne’s (1887) and St Edward’s (1915) as its daughter churches.

Tour of the Church

From outside the church looks rather plain, its dark grey Pennant sandstone topped by a stumpy tower, raised as a War Memorial in 1926. The surrounding churchyard, though full to capacity, has lost most of its gravestones, in a 1969 attempt to ‘tidy it up’! But the churchyard wall survives, parts of it dating from medieval times, much older than the building it surrounds.

A capacious south porch leads into the nave, ‘a glorious polychromatic interior’ said John Betjeman, in the Victorian fashion of many colours within the brick and stonework. The massive crossing has four different types of stone, including much pink Penarth alabaster, also used for the pulpit and chancel screen.

The chancel, though with modern choir stalls, shows much of Prichard’s work, in the south arcade, sedilia and mysterious carved heads. A great east window from 1952 [the original stained glass was destroyed by bomb blast damage in WW2] depicts the Ascension in white and gold, flanked by the patron saints of the daughter churches of that time. It was commissioned post war through the energetic efforts of Revd. Gwynno James, the Vicar.

         

Below the window is the carved and gilded Reredos, by the famous Ninian Comper, showing the Risen Christ and his 12 Apostles. To the north, arches with lavishly carved capitals lead into the church’s unique feature, the Bute Mausoleum.
Rebuilt in the 1880’s, this chapel is a deluxe version of the style of the church, with profuse foliage carving, a brick vault and a beautiful mosaic of Christ in Majesty high on the west wall.

     

Beneath, lie nine members of the Bute family, including the first Marquess and his two wives, buried in triple coffins, pitch-sealed, within massive red Peterhead polished granite tombs, their style similar to that of the tombs of the Tzars in St Petersburg. This unique Victorian funerary chapel is the only Bute burial site in Wales.

St. Margaret’s has enjoyed a long fine musical tradition, and in the mid 50s was the first Parish Choir (i.e. non Cathedral ) ever to sing ‘Choral Evensong’ on BBC Radio 3 (then called the Third Programme) with phone lines temporarily installed for the Outside Broadcast.

The fine pipe organ was originally a 3-manual built by Bevington & Sons, but was raised into an organ loft to create the space below for a choir vestry by Hill Norman & Beard and re-built as a 2-manual in the early 1950s. In 2008 it was further updated by conversion to digital logic and switching.

To be ready to celebrate the Millennium, in 1999 St Margaret’s installed floodlighting as part of a national scheme to floodlight churches, and received partial sponsorship of the capital cost from the Millennium Commission. The running costs are met by church members donating each week in celebration or memory of family events or loved ones.

Today, St Margaret’s has a growing, all-age congregation, a lively Sunday School and choir, and groups catering for all ages. The church with its adjacent gardens has always been, and still is, very popular for weddings. (Indeed it could sometimes reach as many as 9 weddings per Saturday: a nice pocket-money earner for the boy Sopranos of earlier choirs!)

The church will soon be open to visitors on Wednesday mornings between 10 and 12 noon. Every year on Heritage Weekend, crowds of people come, for a warm welcome, for a guided tour of the church, to climb the tower with panoramic views as far as the Severn bridges, and to sample delicious homemade refreshments.