Peace on Earth
Feeling a bit bah humbug about the merry Christmas mayhem? A walk to a tiny hillside church in Snowdonia might just quell those Scrooge-ish sentiments.
THE BUILDING HUNKERS into a remote hollow in the hills, its small churchyard enclosed by a diamond of dry stone walls. Beyond rises a small peak, once known as Daffodil Hill for its wild yellow blooms in spring, before the land drops over 900 feet into the sweep of the Conwy Valley. Behind me the ground lifts into the Carneddau and the highest, largest expanse of upland outside Scotland. The peace is so intense on this winter’s day at Llangelynnin church that I can hear the pulse of blood in my ears. The contrast with the bustling streets of festive shoppers could not be starker.
“Of course, it would have been right in the middle of the mountain community when it was built,” says Clive Addison, a local smallholder who is showing me round the church. “It would be like building it on Conwy high street today.” He explains that in the 6th century, when the first religious settlement was established here by Saint Celynnin, dense forest made the valleys impassable and people preferred the higher, barer slopes – as the wealth of ancient forts, stones and roads later in the walk make clear.
As we step into the porch Clive points to a slit in the stonework: “It’s called a squint window. Look through it and you’ll see it lines up with the churchyard gate so the vicar could see who was coming before they arrived.” The main part of the building dates to the 12th century and it was the primary church for the parish for hundreds of years: “They would have come from throughout the local area,” says Clive, “from the villages of Rowen and Henryd.”
I’ve followed in their footsteps from Rowen, climbing two miles up through fields and ancient woodland while the low winter sunshine turned the valley mist to gold. All the paths we tread through Britain’s countryside have been worn by the soles of people before us, but their stories seem most vivid on routes like this. What did the villagers think about as they made their weekly pilgrimage, while the small church bell rang out across the hills? Did they meet neighbours on their journey up and have a bit of a gossip? What might the new parents, brides and grooms, or mourners have prayed about as they walked up this track to christenings, to weddings, to funerals?
Rewards for their climb weren’t just biblical. “There used to be an inn right next door,” says Clive. Sadly for thirsty walkers it was demolished in the early 19th century, and only the foundations remain
close by the church gate. Rumour has it there was also a cockfighting ring up here, its remains now a faint circle just outside the south corner of the graveyard wall. On the inside of that wall-corner you can find St Celynnin’s Holy Well. It’s flanked by stone seats and once had a roof, and its water was probably used to baptise those the saint converted to Christianity. It was also reputed to heal sick children. Parents would bring a piece of their child’s clothing to throw in the well. If it floated the child would recover; if it sank, the child would die. The well is now home to a colony of newts.
Even on a perfect blue-sky day like this, it’s a pull up the slopes and in 1840 a church was built down in the valley that was easier for villagers to get to and the hillside congregation dwindled (we won’t link the waning attendance with the closure of its neighbouring inn). It was the valley church that closed in the 1980s though, while this one in the mountains keeps going. It’s open all year round, with monthly services from spring through to October, starting on Easter Day. “We had a service here at dawn,” says Clive. “As the sun rose it shone right through the window behind the altar. God could not have timed it better.”
The church’s interior is simple and soothing, with rough, whitewashed walls and bare rafters, although it once had a curving barrel ceiling and you can see the ghosts of inscriptions on the eastern wall. There’s the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments in Welsh, the words ‘Fear God and honour the King’ – and a skull and crossbones like you might see on a pirate flag. “It’s nothing to do with piracy, of course” says Clive. “It was a common symbol in churches and on gravestones to remind people of their mortality.”
The building fast disappears from view as I say goodbye to Clive and head on up into the hills. One of the church’s charms is how secret it feels, hidden in its lonely upland dell. I curve around Craig Celynin – named for the same saint as the church – and soon reach Caer Bach. Its name means small fort and the ditches ringing this knoll were dug from the hillside at least a thousand years before the church below was built.
The sound of chewing breaks the sunlit silence and I turn to see a herd of Carneddau ponies grazing
the grassy slope below. Wild horses have lived here since the time of the Celts, and recent DNA testing has proved this is a distinct species, with unique mutations that show it’s evolved as an isolated population for centuries. Small and hardy, they have long been protected by local farmers, even when Henry VIII decreed all feral ponies which weren’t strong enough to carry a knight in full armour should be culled. The ponies are now critical to the preservation of the chough here, by keeping the turf cropped. You might spot flocks of these blackfeathered, red-billed, red-legged acrobats in winter.
Frozen puddles snap underfoot as I follow the long stone wall along the ridge to the high point of the walk at Tal y Fan. The triangulation point sits at 2001 feet which makes it, by some definitions, a mountain – just. The panorama is mountain-huge. The tight-knit fields and curving river of the Conwy Valley. The glass-still sea beneath the layered limestone of the Great Orme. The high Carneddau, where volcanic lava piled up in the Ordovician period, before being scoured to a smooth plateau by glaciers. It’s iced again up there today, with streaks of snow gleaming white. The hush is absolute. The peace up here a tonic.
The descent is a reminder that this is the quietest the hills have been in millennia. The route down is simply littered with ancient artefacts. I soon join the Roman road which once linked Segontium (a fort at Caernarfon) with Deva Victrix (a legionary base at Chester): it would have thudded with the steps of marching soldiers and passing trade. In the neighbouring field, there’s a Bronze Age standing stone and a Neolithic burial chamber. Maen y Bardd, also known as the Rock of the Bard or the Poet Stone, is a 5500-year-old portal dolmen, where the capstone extends beyond the four uprights that support it to form an entrance – or portal. Like the summit of Cadair Idris, legend tells a night spent here might see you awake as a poet. Another story says a giant’s dog took refuge here, from a master across the valley throwing spears. It gave the stones yet another name: Cwt-y-Filiast (Greyhound’s Kennel). The Ffon-y-Cawr (Giant’s Staff) standing stone on the other side of the track is said to be that spear, so he missed by about 200 yards. There’s also a low chambered tomb called Caerhun, and numerous hut circles.
As I go down the hill back into Rowen, I feel like a different person to the one who left a few hours ago. I remember the words of a psalm I once saw etched on a country church window: ‘I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help’. This wild church, these silent hills, the blue-sky views: they have been my help, and this little bit of peace on Earth might just restore your good will too.