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What does Douglas Fairbanks have in common with Saint Illtud? Or Tillie the Toiler with Sir Winston Churchill? Well, the answer is that they all have a connection, however tenuous, with Llantwit Major. Where? Llantwit Major, a small coastal town in the picturesque Vale of Glamorgan, some twenty miles or so to the west of Cardiff.
So many Welsh place names begin with the prefix Llan, don’t they? And, more often than not, that’s followed by the name of the saint to whom the parish church is dedicated. Thus ‘Llanbadarn’ is dedicated to Saint Padarn, ‘Llangurig’ to Saint Curig, Llangynwyd to Saint Cynwyd and so on. But ... hold on a minute ... Llantwit? Surely there was never a Saint Twit, was there? No, of course not. Llantwit is a distortion of the Welsh Llanilltud, the church of Saint Illtud. The linguistically challenged English couldn’t get their teeth and tongues around that one so the name became corrupted. And the name Llantwit Major does not signify that the poor man was a major twit, either. On the contrary, Saint Illtud was one of the most important figures in the early Celtic Christian church and a renowned teacher. In fact, Llantwit Major – or Llanilltud Fawr as I must surely call it from now on – is, arguably, the earliest centre of learning in Europe, older than any of the major universities. Oxford? Cambridge? Forget it. Neither of these august establishments really existed before the 12th century and even Bologna didn’t open its doors to students until AD 1088. Llanilltud Fawr was a major centre of learning five centuries before that, already well-established by the year 540.
A road called ‘College Street’ still runs past the old church, recalling the early seminary which was a major monastic educational settlement in the Celtic Christian tradition. The word ‘llan’ is not the Welsh for a church building – that’s eglwys, of course. ‘Llan’ was the name given to an entire community with a church and clergy at its centre. In the case of a larger ‘llan’, this would have been surrounded by an enclosure encompassing everything needed to sustain those who lived and worshipped there. These were the monks – those who taught and those who didn’t – together with the students and the agricultural workers who enabled the whole community to be self-sufficient. This was certainly the case in Llanilltud Fawr where several archaeological excavations have unearthed the remains of a granary, a brew house and other buildings. In its heyday, in the sixth to the tenth centuries, Llanilltud Fawr is said to have accommodated some two thousand students and legend has it that St. David, St. Patrick and St. Samson were among them.
Communities like this were established by the nomadic preachers who travelled the seaways from Brittany to Cornwall, Ireland, the Isle of Man, south west Scotland and Wales, spreading the Gospel and establishing monasteries and centres of Celtic Christian learning. They were often the well-educated sons of noble families. Their names echo down the ages ... Cadoc, Aidan, Samson, Petroc, Columba ... but surely the most influential of all the Celtic saints was Illtud who inspired the scholars of subsequent generations to establish significant mission centres in Iona (c.563) and Lindisfarne (c.635) after the pattern of the original, here in Llanilltud Fawr.
The area is positively dripping with history and a hill fort is evidence of occupation since the Iron Age. The exact location of a Roman villa just outside the town is a well-kept secret, so as to preserve its unique but fragile mosaic floors. It was after the Romans pulled out that the Celtic Saints arrived but they, in turn, had to make room for the Normans. In many ways, that was bad news because they pushed the native Welsh back to the blaenau, the mountainous region to the north, the area we now know as the South Wales Valleys. Thereafter, the town became a Norman stronghold, losing its Welsh identity to a large extent, though the Normans left us an incredible built legacy. The oldest buildings in the town and in its surrounding area date from this period.
In many ways, this is a town of two halves, particularly since 1938 when the Royal Air Force established an important training base in Saint Athan, the next village along the road to the east, a community dedicated in earlier times to the Irish saint, Tathan. The arrival of the RAF gave rise to the development of shops and businesses in the area, along with banks and a busy post office, well-served by a railway line and road links to nearby Bridgend, Cowbridge and Cardiff.
So, this is a modern, working town but take a short walk to the west, negotiating the medieval offset cross roads as you go, and suddenly there are Grade II listed buildings wherever you look. The Town Hall, which pre-dates the 15th century is still in regular use and the building opposite it, now a pub called The Old Swan, dates from much the same period. Another pub, The White Hart on the opposite side of the Square is a 16th century building. And there’s more – a medieval gate house, a dovecote, an Elizabethan manor house – but right at the centre of the ‘old town’ is by far the most magnificent example of our heritage. The Church of St. Illtud dates from around the year AD1100. Almost as though trying to make amends for their bullying behaviour, the Normans built it in stone on the site of the old monastery. It remains a wonderfully evocative church which evolved almost organically under the devoted attention of generations of skilled stone masons between 1100 and 1400. John Wesley, who preached there in 1777, called it “... the most beautiful as well as the most spacious church in Wales.”
Of the Celtic Christian monastery nothing remains except the priceless Celtic Stones, the finest examples of ancient memorial stones outside the National Museum of Wales. In all probability, these were commissioned as memorials for the kings, noblemen and abbots of the area but they were badly in need of an appropriate exhibition space. Thanks to a local initiative backed by a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, they are now proudly housed in a permanent display in the church’s newly-renovated Galilee Chapel. Here you will see the Houelt Cross dating from AD886 which commemorates Hywel ap Rhys, the ninth century King of Glamorgan. Another commemorates an Abbot Samson and the oldest of all is the rudimentary Illtud Cross, inscribed with what remains of the word ‘ILTU’ and thought to be a Latin dedication of the cross to Saint Illtud, founding father of the sixth century monastic school.
But what has Douglas Fairbanks to do with all this? Or Winston Churchill for that matter? For the answer to that, we have to take a cliff top stroll of some two miles to the west of the town, to St. Donat’s Castle. Donat? Yes, yet another Celtic saint. And again, we’ll find a Norman church built upon Celtic Christian foundations. But we’ll also find a Norman castle of elegant proportions overlooking the Bristol Channel. In the 13th century, the castle came into the ownership of the powerful Stradling family and this saw the beginning of its American connections. Yes, yes, I know; Columbus didn’t make his great discovery until 1492 and I’m talking about an event which occurred in 1423. It was then that Sir Edward Stradling married Joan Beaufort, the illegitimate daughter of Cardinal Henry Beaufort, uncle of King Henry V. And what has that got to do with anything at all? Well, eight generations later, the Stradlings were found to be the ancestors of the sixth President of the United States, John Quincy Adams. But that’s not all.
Fast spool forward to 1925 and an advertisement in Country Life magazine. It was for the sale of a fairytale castle in Wales and it was seen by the American newspaper tycoon, the super-rich William Randolph Hearst who cabled his English agent the instruction to buy it at once. It would be the ultimate gift for the film star Marion Davies, the lover with whom Hearst was absolutely besotted.
And now we begin to see our connections. ‘Tillie the Toiler’ was a silent movie, the type of comedy in which Marion Davies excelled as an actress. Hearst, though, had different ideas. He saw his adored mistress as a great thespian in the Shakespearean mould, a classical actress of stature and he promoted her as such through his newspapers. Hearst founded Cosmopolitan Pictures in Hollywood, bringing financial pressure to bear on the new film company's producers to cast Davies in weighty historical dramas rather than in the light-hearted roles which suited her best. He financed several films on condition that they would be starring vehicles for her, including the 1922 production When Knighthood Was In Flower, a costume drama in which she played the leading role of Mary Tudor, the younger sister of King Henry VIII. Hearst saw St. Donat's Castle as the perfect classical backdrop for Marion Davies, a real-life setting from medieval times. There'd be no need for set designers and film cameras to create this, it was the real deal.
Hearst spent a fortune in restoring St. Donats, buying up entire rooms from castles and manor houses throughout Europe and installing them in his new love nest. The most significant of these was the Great Hall which came from the Bradenstoke Priory in Wiltshire. He had it dismantled then reconstructed brick by brick at the heart of St. Donat's castle. When all was restored to Hearst’s satisfaction, he and Marion Davies began to invite influential politicians and film star friends to stay with them in these opulent surroundings where more than thirty marble bathrooms had been installed for the comfort and convenience of the guests. When George Bernard Shaw stayed here, he judged it to be "... what God would have built if he'd had the money."
As you might have guessed, Douglas Fairbanks was among the many stellar guests, as were Bob Hope and Charlie Chaplin as well as a handful of politicians including Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George, even a teenage John F. Kennedy. During the nineteen thirties, customers in the bar of The Old Swan in Llantwit Major were not surprised to be joined by the likes of Clarke Gable or any one of several other Hollywood stars who would drop in for a revivifying drink after the bracing two-mile cliff top walk from St. Donats. In fact, several of them signed their names on the wall in the tap room and those signatures remained there until some years later when a new landlord, in a zealous effort to spruce up the old pub, repainted the wall thus obliterating the autographs for ever.
These days, the castle is home to the sixth form Atlantic College, the first of fifteen United World Colleges, founded in 1962 and established to enable students from all over the world to follow an international curriculum based on a global ethos which promotes peace through a programme of liberal, progressive and radical education. You’ll also find a thriving Arts Centre in the castle grounds and St. Donats is occasionally used as a wonderful location for films and such major television series as the BBC’s ‘Wolf Hall’.
Llantwit Major seems to excel in blending the old with the new and you’re as likely to find a film crew shooting a costume drama among the medieval buildings and winding streets of the old town as you are to see air crew training in the skies above. And in an exciting recent development, the prestigious car maker Aston Martin is recruiting staff for its new facility at St. Athan where, by 2020, its luxury DBX crossover model will be rolling off the production line, having created 750 directly-related new jobs plus at least another thousand ancillary ones.
So - that’s the future taken care of, too.
(For some useful web addresses, see below .....)
Llantwit Major Guide: http://llantwitmajorguide.co.uk/
St. Illtud’s Church: http://llantwitmajorhistorysociety.co.uk/
The Galilee Chapel Project: www.illtudsgalileechapel.org.uk
St. Donat’s Castle: http://www.castlewales.com/donats.html
St. Donats Arts Centre: http://www.stdonats.com/
Atlantic College: https://www.atlanticcollege.org/
The Old Swan: http://knifeandforkfood.co.uk/venue/the-old-swan-inn/
