In Search of St Tysilio

 Many readers will know that my happy place is North Wales, and that all of my novels feature Welsh characters. This is no indulgence; I write about the erstwhile midlands kingdom of Mercia, and Mercia shared a border with Wales. And today I want to talk about a little connection I found on a recent visit.

In the dark days of January I took myself off for a mini-break, just over the Menai Strait onto Ynys Môn (Anglesey). Usually I travel all over the island, but this time I stayed at Menai Bridge and also decided to leave my car in the hotel car park and explore - on foot - a place that I usually just drive through on my way to other spots on Môn.

Menai Suspension Bridge

I'm sure everyone is familiar with the two famous bridges, Menai Suspension Bridge itself (designed by Thomas Telford) and the newer Britannia Bridge, designed by Robert Stephenson (son of George). I've driven over both, plenty of times, but never explored underneath.

Walking through the town of Menai Bridge I popped into a shop, POM, made a few purchases, and got chatting to Phil who kindly gave me directions to Church Island.

What a delight this place is. Although it's called an Island, there is a permanent causeway so you don't get your feet wet. It's just off a section of the Wales Coastal Path, and I have rarely been in such a peaceful place.

Looking out towards Church Island and beyond to the Britannia Bridge

The information board told me that regular services are still held in the church, which was founded by St Tysilio and actually in Welsh this place is not called Church Island but Llandysilio Island or, I imagine, more correctly Ynys Tysilio .

What struck me most, aside from how beautiful this church is, was the date it was supposedly built: 630AD. This would mean that it has been there since around about the middle of King Penda of Mercia's reign - a man about whom readers of my blog and books will know I've written a great deal. However, as far as I can discover, the present building actually dates to the 15th century, but may well have been built on the same spot as Tysilio's hermitage.

Sadly the church was locked so I was unable to look inside, and had to wait until I came home to research St Tysilio. His name seemed familiar, somehow... (I'll come back to that).

It seems that, as is often the case with early Welsh saints, Tysilio was royal, said to be the son of Brocmail, a prince of Powys. His genealogy is mentioned in the Bonedd y Saint (The Descent of the Saints), compiled in the twelfth century.

There is no 'Life' for him that still exists. It doesn't mean there wasn't one, of course, and I'm aware of plenty for English Saints - Felix's Life of St Guthlac - a Mercian hermit - for example. He was mentioned in the 'Life' of another saint, Beuno, and I like this link because my first ever visit to Wales was when I stayed at Clynnog Fawr, location of the beautiful church of St Beuno. (We also know that Ælfhere, real life character on which my Alvar the Kingmaker was based, was in Clynnog Fawr in 978.)

St Bueno's Clynnog Fawr - Commons attribution link

St Tyslio came to be associated with the community at St Suliac in Brittany and his story became entwined with Suliac's. In this legend, it is said that after Tyslio had founded his church of Llandysilio he went home to Meifod in Montgomeryshire, but was pestered mercilessly by his sister-in-law and fled to Brittany where he founded St Suliac's. It does seem as if these two saints' stories have been conflated and there is no evidence that Tyslio ever left his native Wales. 

And in fact, he's more famous that you might suppose, and not in the way you might think. I said I'd come back to his name...

Drive over the Menai Suspension bridge and turn right, and you come into the town of Menai Bridge. Drive over the Britannia bridge and turn left and you soon come to probably the most famous of all Welsh places:

Commons attribution link

As you might already know, this isn't strictly speaking a 'genuine' name, but was made up as a sort of marketing ploy in the 19th century. But whilst it's a difficult word to say, and hard to understand if you don't speak Welsh, let's break it down, in its most usual translation:

The church of St Mary (Llanfair) [of the] pool (pwll) of the white hazels (gwyn gyll) near to (go ger) the fierce whirlpool (y chwyrn drobwll) [and] the church of St Tysilio (Llantysilio) of the red cave (gogo[f] goch).

So next time you're practising saying this out loud (you don't? Just me then!) remember that it incorporates Llantysilio*, and it refers to the beautiful building on Church Island in the Menai Strait, built when King Penda was at the height of his powers just over the border!

*Llandysilio/Llantysilio - I've seen both versions of this in the course of my research and I'm not sure why. I know enough Cymraeg (Welsh) to understand that this shift from Tysilio to Dysilio is probably because of a mutation. Nine Welsh letters mutate in certain grammatical instances, but I'm not competent enough to explain all that just yet. You see the same thing with Llandudno, where you'll find the church of St Tudno on the Great Orme. 

(Almost) Touching the Past - Medieval Welsh Documents

I spend an inordinate amount of time studying Anglo-Saxon charters, law codes, letters and chronicles. There is something about reading - albeit in translation - the original words; even if these primary sources are not completely contemporary, they are an echo of a voice from years, centuries ago, and it never fails to thrill me when I read them. 

They provide the connection between what we are told when we are being taught history at school, or elsewhere, and what we can discover for ourselves. Somehow, it makes the people from the past become 'real'. And I don't restrict this interest to Anglo-Saxon materials.

In 2012 I visited Strata Florida Abbey, or to give it its Welsh name, Ystrad Fflur. It's a ruin, as you can see. But 'round the back' are a line of grave markers. It is known that many members of the Royal house of Deheubarth were buried here. Was I looking at their grave stones?

It's not known, for sure. Standing in the grounds of the ruined abbey I certainly felt the past, but I edged much closer to it when I read a translation of a Deheubarth royal charter, dated 1198. 

Rhys ap Rhys confirms to Strata Florida Abbey all the lands which it received from his brother Maelgwn, together with his body for burial. [Dated at Strata Florida, original text in Latin.]

I don't know if I was looking at the grave, or marker, of Maelgwn, but it closed the gap between a weathered old piece of stone and a real person.

On that same trip, I visited the National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth and I saw an exhibit that made me shiver. In a good way...

Years ago, I had read Sharon K Penman's Welsh Trilogy, and swiftly followed that with Edith Pargeter's The Brothers of Gwynedd Quartet. The historical detail in both these series is reliable and impeccably researched. I then read a lot of non-fiction books about the Princes of Gwynedd, and holidayed in the area many times. I'd seen what is thought to be the sarcophagus of Llywelyn Fawr (Llewelyn the Great), and that of his wife, Joan, and visited a lot of sites associated with them, including their Royal Llys (house) at Rhosyr. To stand among the foundation stones of what was their dwelling added another dimension to my discovery of Welsh history.

But the moment I felt closest to this man was when I saw the exhibit that day in the National Library in Aberystwyth - his great seal.

The stories, told fictionally or factually, give a real sense of the man. To see his great seal attached to a document brought him nearer, and gave him real identity. Those who know his story, or who have read the novels, will understand how much more potent it is to read the translations of letters and other acts, which tell us that:

Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, prince of north Wales, agrees to indemnify King Henry III and the latter's men for injuries inflicted by Llywelyn and his men in the troubles surrounding the seizure of Kinnerley. Dated 7th October 1223.

Llewelyn was determined to bring the in-fighting in Wales to a halt, to strengthen it against England, and to establish once and for all its independent status. The above example shows how this was no easy, peaceful task.

If you do know the stories, you will know that Llewelyn and Joan had only one son together. How much more 'real' these characters become when you learn of the existence of a letter, "soon after May 1230", from:

Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, prince of Aberffraw and lord of Snowden, to Eva de Braose, concerning the marriage of her daughter Isabel to his son Dafydd.

Family squabbles amongst the Welsh princes continued, but Llewelyn's eventual successor was equally determined to champion the Welsh as an independent nation. How it must have pained Llywelyn's grandson, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd (spoiler alert - he was known at Llywelyn the Last) to agree, on 9th November 1277,

to pay 500 marks annually to his lord, King Edward I, for Anglesey and the land of his brother Dafydd. Dated at Aberconwy.

Poignantly, Aberconwy was the traditional burial place of the princes of Gwynedd. It no longer exists, a victim not of the ravages of time, but of Edward's order for the destruction of the abbey and to use the stones to build Conwy Castle and the surrounding walled town.

A letter from Eleanor, princess of Wales and lady of Snowden (Llywelyn's wife, and daughter of Simon de Montford) was written to Edward, sometime between 1279 and 1281,

asking him not to heed those who say damaging things to him about her and her husband. 

Eleanor died in childbirth, and by all accounts Llywelyn was devastated. He himself came to an end at Cilmeri, not far from Buellt Wells.

A letter from Roger le Strange to Edward I:

informs the king that the troops under Roger’s command fought with Llywelyn ap Gruffudd in the land of Built on Friday next after the feast of St. Nicholas (December 11th, 1282], that Llywelyn ap Gruffudd is dead, his army defeated, and all the flower of his army dead, as the bearer of the letter will tell. [French]

I visited Cilmeri on a damp and drizzly day and stood for a while at the spot where reportedly Llywelyn's head was washed,

and then I stood for a moment by his memorial.

It was a sombre moment, but for a glimpse of the man who was not known as 'the last' while he ruled, how about this prosaic letter, from 

Llywelyn, prince of Wales and lord of Snowdon, to Guncelin de Badlesmere, justice of Chester, asking him to defer the business of the corn in Anglesey until Llywelyn has received clarification from the king regarding a certain obscure word in the king's charter on this matter.

No blood, no guts, no tragedy, but a glimpse into the everyday medieval world, and a sense of the tension between proud Welsh Princes and their would-be overlords. This is when history comes to life for me.

[all photographs by and copyright of the author]

Further reading:
English Historical Documents Vol II Ed. D Douglas
Handlist of the Acts of Native Welsh Rulers - KL Maund
The Taming of the Dragon - Bartlett
The Welsh Kings - KL Maund
The Welsh Princes - Turvey
Here Be Dragons, Falls the Shadow, The Reckoning - SK Penman
The Brothers of Gwynedd Quartet - Edith Pargeter