A valley built on movement
Cwmyoy
A leaning medieval church, hill circuits and old inns in the steep, glaciated Vale of Ewyas.
- Best for
- The leaning church and hill walks
- Give it
- A half day, or three hours for the church circuit
- Don't miss
- The recovered Cwmyoy Cross inside St Martin's
Photo: Martin Richard Phelan · CC BY-SA 2.0 · cropped
The Fox verdict
Come for the lean; stay for the valley
St Martin's is the unmistakable draw, but Cwmyoy also opens onto church-to-church walking, the Skirrid and a chain of characterful valley stops.
The church's bowed nave, twisted walls and displaced tower turn post-glacial geology into something you can see in stone. Pair it with a moderate circuit, Llanthony Priory or a quiet drink at the Queen's Head, known locally as Billy's.
Where to go
Places in Cwmyoy
Every place below is checked against a published source, listed with what it is and how long to give it.
Local signatures
3 places
Start here
St Martin's Church
See the tower leaning about six feet beyond its foundations, the bowed nave, twisted walls, Brute-family tombstones and the recovered 13th-century Cwmyoy Cross.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 45 minutes
- Locality
- Cwmyoy
Skirrid Inn
An inn with stone walls, timber panelling, fires and a large beer garden, serving dishes including steak-and-ale pie, fish and chips and Sunday roast.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 60 minutes
- Locality
- Llanvihangel Crucorney
Abergavenny Museum and Castle
A town-history museum in a Regency building on the Norman motte, with displays spanning prehistory onwards and castle grounds with picnic space.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 60 minutes
- Locality
- Abergavenny
Food & drink
2 placesQueen's Head
Known locally as Billy's, this old stone pub has one stone-flagged bar, low beams, a real fire, a beer garden and lunchtime food.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 60 minutes
- Locality
- Cwmyoy, overlooking the river and hills
- Access
- Bring cash for the Queen's Head.
Half Moon Hotel
A quiet 1700s country inn formed from two cottages, serving homemade pub food, with Wye Valley Butty Bach among its regular beers.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 60 minutes
- Locality
- Llanthony, beyond Llanthony Priory
History & heritage
1 placeLlanthony Priory
Substantial red-stone arches from an Augustinian house that developed from William de Lacy's hermitage by 1118 and was suppressed in 1539.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 75 minutes
- Locality
- Llanthony
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Three ways to explore Cwmyoy
Signature outings
A church held against the slide
Look from the six-foot lean of St Martin's tower to the bowed nave, buttresses and metal rods restraining the shifting structure.
A country inn shaped from two cottages
Stop at the Half Moon Hotel, a quiet 1700s country inn formed from two cottages and serving homemade pub food.
Llanthony's red-stone remains
Explore the substantial arches of the Augustinian priory in its dramatically enclosed valley setting.
The village story
Cwmyoy Village Guide
A leaning church, a glaciated border valley and the people and paths that keep drawing visitors uphill.
The church that moved
The tower of St Martin's leans about six feet out over its own foundations, and it is not the only thing in the church that has moved. The nave is bowed, the walls twist, and the whole building sits on debris from a landslide that came down the hillside when the glaciers retreated some ten thousand years ago. Local tradition preferred a different account: an earthquake at the moment of the Crucifixion. The scar it left is still visible on the slope above.
Cwmyoy stands in the Vale of Ewyas, a steep glaciated valley beneath Hatterrall Hill, with the Afon Honddu running south past it. The place-name means Valley of the Yoke. From the ridge, the border between Wales and England runs along the top, and on a clear day you can see the Sugar Loaf, the Skirrid, the Malvern Hills and, further off, the Cotswolds.
Billy's and the valley inns
The village pub, the Queen's Head, is known locally as Billy's after a landlord who served for more than forty years and was regarded as Monmouthshire's longest-serving publican before his death in early 2022. Its single stone-flagged bar has low beams and a real fire, while the beer garden looks over the river and hills. Walkers, cyclists and pony trekkers stop here for a quiet drink, with Kingstone Classic as a regular beer and food at lunchtime.
Down the valley at Llanvihangel Crucorney, the Skirrid Inn serves steak-and-ale pie, fish and chips, Welsh beef lasagne and Sunday roast amid fires, timber panelling and a large garden. The inn's ghost stories add to its character. Farther north in Llanthony, the Half Moon Hotel occupies a 1700s inn formed from two cottages. It reopened in spring 2025 after six months shut and serves homemade pub food; Wye Valley Butty Bach is among its regular beers.
Getting there and walking out
Abergavenny, about seven miles south, is where you stock up and find the nearest railway station, on the Welsh Marches line between Newport and Hereford, with step-free access. From the A465 at Llanvihangel Crucorney, a narrow road climbs the Llanthony Valley to Cwmyoy. The 2026 landslip below the village was repaired and the road reopened that May. Stagecoach 23 links Abergavenny and Hereford, stopping at Llanvihangel Crucorney and Pandy, the nearest bus stops to Cwmyoy.
The walking is the reason most people come. A moderate circuit of about six miles links Cwmyoy's church with the tiny one at Partrishow across the hills; a longer, harder round from Pandy climbs the Hatterrall Ridge on Offa's Dyke Path, drops past Llanthony Priory and comes back through the village. The Skirrid itself has a waymarked four-mile climb to the ruined chapel of St Michael on its summit, with dogs allowed under close control.
Cross, rods and a lasting lean
Back inside Cwmyoy's leaning church, the painted tombstones to the Brute family, a carved image of Christ and the thirteenth-century Cwmyoy Cross repay the walk up. The cross was stolen in 1967 and spotted for sale in a London antique shop by a British Museum staff member. It is now bolted to the church floor. Simon Jenkins wrote that visitors "might be on the deck of a galleon in a storm, with the chancel about to slide overboard."
Metal rods run through the walls to hold what the buttresses cannot, and the church has stayed roughly where it is. Visitors still come to see it lean.
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A guide with a point of view
Written from research. Edited for real journeys.
Use the Official site links for live practical details, then use this guide for context, ideas and room to explore.
Photography credits & licences
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- File:St Martin's Church - Cwmyoy, Monmouthshire - geograph.org.uk - 5891511.jpg — photograph by Martin Richard Phelan; St Martin's Church - Cwmyoy, Monmouthshire by Martin Richard Phelan. Source record on Wikimedia Commons. Declared source image. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0. File changes: Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons, resized to a maximum 1920px edge and encoded as an optimised JPEG. Display changes: Displayed with responsive CSS cropping.
Sources
Every place on this page is checked against a published source. Each entry links the record we used and names who publishes it.
- St Martin's Church — beacons-npa.gov.uk statutory register or public authority
- Queen's Head — cymru.camra.org.uk other published source
- Half Moon Hotel — camra.org.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Skirrid Inn — skirridinn.com operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Llanthony Priory — cadw.gov.wales statutory register or public authority
- Abergavenny Museum and Castle — visitmonmouthshire.com operator, sector body or destination organisation