Neath Abbey

Neath Abbey is a ruined Cistercian monastery in the care of Cadw, on a rocky terrace beside the River Neath at Dyffryn Clydach, Glamorgan, about a mile west of Neath.

Overview

Cadw records that the abbey was founded in 1130 by Richard de Granville as a daughter house of Savigny in Normandy and was absorbed into the Cistercian Order in 1147. The expanding community rebuilt on a larger scale from the late twelfth to the fourteenth century. The abbey church was erected in one campaign between about 1280 and 1330. East and west cloister ranges survive: the east range, completed in the early thirteenth century, held the dormitory, reredorter and chapter house, with vaulted undercrofts remaining at its southern end; the late-twelfth-century west range housed the lay brothers’ dormitory, refectory and common room. The south range (refectory and kitchen) has been almost entirely destroyed.

After the Dissolution in 1539 a large Tudor house was built over the south-east corner of the monastic complex; it was abandoned in the early eighteenth century. Copper working and a neighbouring ironworks later engulfed the ruins. Coflein notes that the site was cleared in the first half of the twentieth century and placed in state care in 1944. Cadw describes the ruins, with Llanthony and Tintern, as among the most important monastic remains in south Wales; the church of c.1280–1330 is the principal standing Gothic fabric. The site is scheduled as GM006.

Further Information

• Cadw scheduled monument GM006
• Cadw visitor page: Neath Abbey and Gatehouse
• Coflein NPRN 133