Llanspyddid

St Cattwg's and the Usk Valley

St Cattwg's stands on the southern edge of the Usk valley, and in its churchyard is a cross-incised pillar stone that has been there since the early medieval period. Tradition ties it to Anlach, father of Brychan, founder of the old kingdom of Brycheiniog; the thirteenth-century de Situ Brecheniauc records him buried before the door of the church here. Whether the grave is real has never been established. The stone is real, and so is the church behind it, though it's no longer used for regular worship — a single-cell building mostly of the fourteenth century, with a decorated sixteenth-century north porch and exceptionally carved bargeboards.

Behind the village the land rises gently toward the Brecon Beacons foothills. Across the A40 it drops away to the river, where the Usk runs east toward Brecon. Below Usk Reservoir the whole river is protected ground, holding Atlantic salmon, three kinds of lamprey, twaite shad, bullhead and otters.

Food and Markets in Nearby Brecon

Llanspyddid keeps no shop or pub of its own, which puts Brecon, two miles east, at the centre of any stay. The Brecon Tap does home-cooked food and local real ale, with live music and a beer garden, and trades on its Famous Tap Pies. Paddy Sweeney has run his butcher's shop in the town for more than forty years, selling meat off Welsh pasture alongside his own sausages and burgers. The covered Market Hall holds a permanent butcher, fishmonger and greengrocer with a café among the stalls; general markets run on Tuesdays and Fridays, and farmers' and craft markets take the second and third Saturdays.

For walking, a recorded loop from the village runs a little over seven miles, climbing more than thirteen hundred feet to a high point near nineteen hundred. Closer to Brecon the options soften: the wooded path beside the River Honddu, the flat canal towpath out to Brynich Lock, the Promenade along the Usk.

Walking and Connections

The T6 bus stops at St Cattwg's Church on its way between Brecon and Swansea, and the X80 calls there too, running between Brecon and Llandovery. The nearest railway station is Llangammarch, about thirteen miles off and a request stop, where you signal the driver to board.

Inside the Former Church

The church repays a slower look. Inside are a retooled thirteenth-century round font, a medieval piscina, and a sounding board built from a fifteenth-century screen. An eroded grave slab belongs to the Rev Thomas Williams, "Vicar Gwyn," the late-sixteenth-century vicar who founded the Abercamlais line. The Victorian architect C. Buckeridge reworked the interior in 1879-80; Robert Haslam judged the result "a regular and boring interior." Out in the churchyard lies Gustavus Adolphus John of Llanllwni, who died in 1766 at forty; the historian Theophilus Jones, writing in 1800, recorded that he was a Black man, and nothing further about him is known.

The Village Gathering Ground

Between 2006 and 2009 the villagers cleared and restored the churchyard and the field beside it, which was blessed and opened for fetes and games. That is where the village still gathers — a marquee up on the church field for the summer fete, bingo nights beside the playground, and money raised for playground equipment, the marquee and community wellbeing events.