Llanfeugan

A Church Apart

St Meugan's church stands at the end of a lane, on a spur of ground where two streams converge above a deeply cut valley. Around it grow twelve yews, some of them vast; Samuel Lewis, writing in 1834, called them "some of the finest yew trees in south Wales", and one measured nine and a half yards around its trunk. Beside the churchyard sits a single house, Ty'r-Eglwys. That, more or less, is Llanfeugan. The Clwyd-Powys archaeologists who surveyed the settlement put it plainly: "The overall impression is one of isolation."

Early-nineteenth-century maps show the same sparse arrangement you find today: a church, one house, and the lane. When the lord of Pencelli built a church here around 1272, worship stayed at Llanfeugan rather than moving up to Pencelli Castle, less than a kilometre away. The name means simply "church of St Meugan", and the place is recorded as St Meugan in 1251 and Llan Migan in 1522.

Paint, Timber and Churchyard Games

The church rewards the walk down the lane. Inside are a late-medieval wagon roof, a surviving section of the old chancel screen with traces of its original paint, and a set of chancel stalls dated to about 1700. The pulpit incorporates seventeenth-century woodwork, and there is a monument to Lewis Gunter, who died in 1683, carved with serpents. During the 1891 restoration, workers found a White Rose of York painted on the wall beside the tower, and discovered that imported sand had raised the north-aisle floor by some twenty inches. They also pulled timbers from the old rood loft and left them in the churchyard, where two later visitors found them still lying there, rotting, fifty-five years on.

The churchyard holds the shaft and base of a medieval cross, faint traces of what may have been a cockpit, and the marks of a handball court that used the tower's west wall. The game was played against the church wall by the eighteenth century.

Talybont's Store and Pubs

For shops and services, nearby Talybont-on-Usk is the practical base; Pencelli and Talybont connect by the canal towpath. Talybont Stores, run by Shailesh and Bhavna Karavadra, is a convenience store, café and Post Office by the canal, selling local bread and milk, Welsh gifts, local beer and cider, and homemade frozen curries: chicken jalfrezi, tadka dal, chicken biryani, a chickpea-and-spinach Madras. The café, Bhavna's Indian Kitchen, does tandoori chicken wings, paneer tikka, lamb bhuna, butter chicken, dal makhani and gulab jamun, alongside fish and chips.

There are three pubs to choose between, in Talybont and neighbouring Pencelli. The Star Inn is an early-nineteenth-century building with two stone-floored rooms, log fires and a small central bar; its public bar keeps a red quarry-tile floor, a bar-back thought to date from around 1930, and an old stone fireplace with a bread oven. It serves a changing range of ales from independent breweries, welcomes dogs, and has a large garden down by the river. The White Hart is an old coaching inn with a bar and restaurant and seating along the canal. The Royal Oak, over in Pencelli, is family-run, with a garden on the water.

Walks, Locks and the Last Rural Leg

Walkers have the towpath and a good deal more. The Henry Vaughan Walk, a two-mile circuit from Talybont, threads road, field paths, the cobbled Brinore Tramroad and the canal, past poetry posts and a physic garden that mark the seventeenth-century poet-doctor Henry Vaughan and his twin brother Thomas. Follow the canal south towards Llangynidr and you reach a flight of five locks that drop the water seventeen metres. The nearest railway station is at Abergavenny, some fifteen miles from Talybont; the last stretch to the church is all minor lanes.

Where the Lane Ends

The lane ends at the churchyard stile, and beyond it the valley falls away to the north, where an early footbridge once crossed to a barn that is now a ruin.