CAERPHILLY CASTLE.
BEAUPRÉ CASTLE.
The tombs of Llandaff Cathedral are of great interest; and it is with real pleasure that one sees the new, for once, not unworthy to be beside the old. The recumbent figure of marble on the grave of Dean Vaughan is really beautiful.
As we climb the long hill a mile or two beyond Llandaff, we see Cardiff stretched out below us, a forest of masts and tall chimneys—an impressive symbol in its way. Then, when we reach the level ground, we forget everything for a time but the sheer delight of moving on a perfect road—forget even the heights of Exmoor showing faintly across the water on the left, and on the right the wild hills of Glamorganshire rolling away into the distance.
Now, at Cowbridge, it is necessary to come to a decision. If it should be too much for the resolution of an ardent motorist to leave this road, he may pursue his way to Neath without “lette,” as Leland would say; but for all antiquarians, artists, and other lovers of romance and beauty, the finger-post points very resolutely to a detour by Beaupré, Llantwit, St. Donat’s, and Ewenny.
About two miles south of Cowbridge is Old Beaupré (Bewper). Do not climb the stile and walk across the fields, but drive on a hundred yards or so to the gate; for this grass-grown, deserted avenue is the fitting approach to the spellbound house of the Bassetts, that strange mixture of splendour and squalor, with its delicate carvings and dainty Corinthian pillars and its air of utter desolation. We know very well as we look at it that fair faces once looked down through those Tudor windows, and gay satins swept between the classic columns of the doorway, and the walls echoed to music and singing and laughter, until the fatal day that an enchantment was laid upon the beautiful white doorway of the love-lorn Welshman who learnt his art in Italy, and upon the avenue that once led the Bassetts out to war and home to love, and upon every stone of the old castle, so that it became a farmhouse. And now the fluted pillars and carved friezes are green with moss and fringed with ferns, and the walls echo to nothing but the clucking of innumerable hens.
Beaupré is not greatly visited. There is, indeed, nothing to see but that strange, incongruous doorway and the ghosts that flutter round it; but it is one of those eloquent, unforgettable places through which, for a moment, one seems to be actually in touch with the life that they have seen.
At Llantwit Major the interest is of a very different kind. Here there is not very much to attract the artist, but to the antiquary and historian “the dwelling-place and home of the Blessed Illtyd” must surely be of the first importance. For it was here that the Breton saint, St. Iltutus, or Illtyd, founded a monastery and university that made a very deep mark upon the life of the sixth century; for its professors educated not only all the princes of the west, but also every illustrious Welshman—bishop, saint, or scholar—of the day. It is not surprising that an institution of its size and brilliancy—for its 2,400 students filled four hundred houses—should have seized the imagination of early writers, and given rise to so much picturesque legend that it is hard to know the truth. Some say that St. David himself was taught by St. Illtyd, and that Gildas the historian, called the Wise, and Taliesin, the bard of the Radiant Brow, were also brought up here. Of Illtyd himself the tale is told that he was originally a soldier, but hearing the call, he forsook his profession and his wife for the life of a hermit; and when his poor wife came to him, one day as he was working in the fields, he silently turned away from her, and stood so, with his back to her, till she left him in despair. This is a pathetic foundation for all the scholarship and saintliness of the sixth century in Wales, and one can only hope, for the sake of Illtyd’s conscience when he was a comfortable professor, that it is untrue. Of all the four hundred houses and seven halls of his university not a stone is now left; but in the church, which is itself very full of interest, there are some wonderful monuments, one of them being a memorial raised to St. Illtyd by one of his pupils, Samson, a saint himself. The head of the cross is gone, but on the shaft the beautiful Celtic designs are still clear and the words still legible to those who can read them—“Samson placed this cross for his soul.”
Just beyond Llantwit and nearer to the Bristol Channel is St. Donat’s, which, as Leland says, “stondith on a meane hille a quarter of a mile from the Severn Se.” This castle, partly Norman and partly Tudor, has been inhabited ever since the Norman conquest of Glamorgan; and so, as “the parkes booth and the castell long to ... a gentilman of very fair landes in that countery,” we can see no more than a glimpse of towers above the trees. But we pass close to the churchyard, and there we may see the very beautiful and uninjured Celtic cross.