1 - An Overview of Welsh Monuments

Summary

The monuments of south Wales fall generally within the mainstream insular traditions of monumental design and production (themselves influenced by those of France) which developed in England from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries. However, the fundamental characteristics of southern Welsh society outlined in the previous chapter had a shaping effect on the monumental culture of the region, giving it a distinctive flavour compared to that found in other parts of the British Isles. This chapter will take both a wide and a long view of this culture, beginning with a survey of the historiography and documentary evidence available to the historian. It then moves on to focus on changing levels of interest in monumental commemoration across the chronological span of the period, which are compared to the patterns familiar from English studies and considered in the light of demographic change. The physical distribution of the surviving material evidence across the region is then examined, and its relationship to settlement patterns and the dispersal of ethnic groups is assessed. The focus is then narrowed to consider institutional location.

THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF WELSH MONUMENTS

The medieval monuments of Wales, in contrast to those of England, have been largely neglected until relatively recently. Even though this is so, it is important to acknowledge that a good beginning on their systematic study was in fact made in the nineteenth century. In 1869 a plea was made in Archaeologia Cambrensis, the journal of the Cambrian Archaeological Association, for the greater study of the monumental remains of Wales, and of Glamorgan in particular. The author claimed that ‘there are a great many monuments, incised slabs, coffin-lids, etc. to be found in the parochial churches of this county…. All these remains ought to be engraved and published, and a most interesting volume would be the result.’ Encouraging as this attitude would appear to be from the modern researcher's point of view, this was a time when the study of Welsh memorial sculpture, in common with that of England, was rooted in the antiquarian tradition, and consequently the majority of the nineteenth-century articles on monuments published in Archaeologia Cambrensis concern themselves with descriptive details of heraldry, genealogy, armour and dress and are lacking in what we would consider to be scholarly analysis.