Nevern

The Bleeding Yew and St Brynach

In the churchyard at Nevern there is a yew that bleeds. It stands in an avenue of yews about seven hundred years old, and one of them leaks a blood-red sap that dries pink. Local tradition offers three explanations: it bleeds for a monk wrongly hanged from it, or until a Welsh prince sits again at Nevern Castle, or until the world is at peace. Nobody has settled the matter.

The tree leads you up to St Brynach's Church, which is the reason most people come. St Brynach, a sixth-century Irish evangelist, is said to have been led to this spot by a white sow, and to have talked with angels on the hill to the west — Carn Ingli, the Mount of Angels. The church he founded around 540 AD is now largely medieval, with a castellated tower and a scatter of very old stones inside and out. The Maglocunus Stone, inscribed in both Latin and Ogham, has been repurposed as a windowsill.

The Great Cross and the Valley Village

Outside stands the Great Cross of Nevern: thirteen feet of local dolerite, carved with knotwork around the tenth century, made in two pieces joined by a mortise-and-tenon joint. It is one of the finest carved crosses in Britain. By tradition the first cuckoo back from Africa sings from it every 7 April, St Brynach's feast day.

The village itself is small — around 865 people in the wooded Nevern valley, two miles east of Newport on the B4582, inside the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. The River Nevern runs through it, crossed by a Grade II listed bridge of two unequal arches. There are no shops, no butcher, no deli; for those you drive the five minutes into Newport.

The Trewern Arms

The one pub is the Trewern Arms, a sixteenth-century inn beside the river with a beer garden on the bank and ten rooms upstairs. It has been the village's only pub for a long time and reviewers liked the food and the staff. A word of caution, though: as of early 2025 it was up for sale with the bar and restaurant closed, so check before you plan an evening around it.

Walking to Nevern Castle

The walking is the other draw. A short village circular of 2.3 miles takes in the church, the cross, the yew avenue and the earthworks of Nevern Castle in about an hour and a half. The castle is a Norman earth-and-timber fortress, later rebuilt in stone — possibly one of the earliest stone castles in Wales — captured in 1191 by the Lord Rhys from his own son-in-law and destroyed four years later. Little of it now shows above ground. A longer 6.5-mile loop follows the river down to Newport and up around the lower slopes of Carn Ingli, with a few steep narrow stretches to keep you honest.

The Pilgrims' Cross

Nevern lies on the old pilgrim road to St Davids, and you can still find the Pilgrims' Cross cut into the roadside rock between the church and the castle, marking the way for people who walked it a very long time ago. The cuckoo, they say, still comes here first.