Llanthony Tertia, Capel-y-ffin

First state. The original monastery foundations of Llanthony Priory in the Vale of Ewyas date back to the 12th century but Llanthony Prima was ransacked after 100 years. (The monks were the moved on to Gloucestershire where they founded Llanthony Secunda.) Four miles up the valley the Reverend Joseph Leycester Lyne (Father Ignatius, the Anglican clergyman, established the modern abbey in 1870 in a field where he later claimed to have seen a vision of the Virgin Mary. His monastery, designed by Charles Buckeridge in the popular gothic revival style, came to be known as Llanthony Tertia. Llanthony is an abbreviation of the welsh 'Llandewi nant Honddu' - the Church of St David on the Honddu stream. Father Ignatius died in 1908 and the monastery was not used until 1924 when Eric Gill sought the permission of the Benedictine monks on Caldey Island to establish a community of craftsmen at Capel-y-finn. A small number of craftsmen joined him from the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic, Ditchling but he was never to establish a guild at Capel.