Notes on St Davids Part 2

NOTES ON ST. DAVID'S CHURCH, MUCH DEWCHURCH by Hubert Reade (1936)

Part 2 - MONKS AND MISSIONARIES

Within the next 120 years the Roman rule over Britain became a thing of the past and the Legions evacuated the island, but by that time Christianity was already the dominating religion in the lands west of the Severn, and the Welsh Church which was in full communion with all its sister churches throughout the Empire was solidly established. The monastic system which had been set up in Italy and the East within fifty years after Christianity had become the religion of the Empire was eagerly adopted by the inhabitants of Archenfield and Ewyas. Llanfrother - the "Church of the Brothers" - in the parish of Hentland was in being before 450 and served as a training ground for the teachers of Christianity in the district and there were similar establishments at Cloduck and at Moccas, whilst at Much Dewchurch before A.D.500, monks were living in a cluster of low huts with a sickhouse and humble chapel, which stood in the orchard which now lies between the Post Office and Parish Church. It has been said, probably with little foundation, that the great St. David, the patron of the Welsh, was born at Much Dewchurch, but there is far better reason for believing that parts of the existing Church are the work of Welsh monks of the Seventh Century who were inmates of the adjoining monastery. Bryngwyn, as has been said, had been granted to the See of Llandaff in 531, and it is, perhaps, worth noting that even in heathen times the parish had been one of the strongholds of Pagan worship. Some remains of the ancient Druid worship were said to exist about eighty years ago near the house at Old Bryngwyn, and "Poor Man's Wood" which runs down the side of Cole's Tump above the Mynde is really the "Devil's Wood", for in Saxon times, as now in Germany, Satan is often spoken of as the "Poor Man", and preserves the memories of the sites in which the ancient inhabitants of Herefordshire offered human victims to Coel the God of Heaven to whom the hill was sacred. Everyone in the parish knows the legend, which tells that if a tree is felled in that wood, the owner of the Mynde or his heir will die within the year. We often find a very early British or French Church founded near such a centre of heathen worship to drive out the evil influence. St. Paul 's Cathedral in London, and York Minster, are said to stand on the sites of heathen temples.

However this may be, Much Dewchurch had long been. a Christian parish at the time when, in A.D. 596 St. Augustine and his band of Roman Missionaries landed at Pegwell Bay in the Isle of Thanet to bring back Christianity to Eastern England, where but for a few scattered remnants it had been nearly stamped out by the Saxon invaders 120 years before. And when the great evangelist from Rome travelled to the Severn to meet the Christian Bishops who still ruled in the Welsh Marches, a Bishop of Hereford seems to have been one of those who met him, and who refused to recognize him as their superior.

It seems probable that the lower courses of masonry in the south wall of the nave of Much Dewchurch, at least as far up as the sills of the large windows, are of Welsh origin, and that the brown stones covered with a design worked out in a kind of basket work which lie in the porch are part of the canopy which covered the altar of that building. In any case they cannot be later than 800 A.D. and are certainly of Celtic work.

Next month, part 3 will be entitled "Wormelow Tump. Harold's Border Defences."