Trellech Lost city of Wales

Driving through the countryside between Monmouth and Chepstow you may happen across the sleepy hamlet of Trellech. Today, Trellech is a small village but this small settlement hides evidence of previous one, giving rise to the legend of “the lost city of Ancient Wales”.

Written evidence tells of how Trellech has a history dating back a thousand years, and at its peak, the settlement was one of the most important cities of mediaeval Wales.

There is little physical evidence of this mediaeval city though, and as a result there is much that is unknown about it.

Looking towards Trellech - Ros Hallett - CC-BY-SA-2.0

The name Trellech means “three stones”, and is a name that signifies the presence of standing stones in the area. Locally these leaning stones are known as “Harold’s Stones”, supposedly in reference to the king of England defeated at Hastings. Of course, the stones predate King Harold by hundreds of years, with supposition being that they are from the Bronze Age, and aligned for the winter solstice.
There is obvious physical evidence for occupation of the area in the time of King Harold, as a Norman castle’s motte was located on the 40 foot high mound that is “Terret Tump”.

Historians are today mostly interested in the period from when the castle was constructed, as it was a period when William the Conqueror built a string of castles to secure the Welsh border. Around such castles grew settlements, and the Trellech castle would have protected the local workings of charcoal and iron ore.

Within two hundred years of the Norman conquest, the settlement of Trellech was made up of 378 burgage plots, or houses, making it larger than Cardiff or Chepstow from the same period.

This though was in 1288; the limited written evidence suggests that three years after this date, much of Trellech was destroyed. The cause of the destruction being in relation to a case of deer poaching.
The town though survived in the hands of the de Clare family of Marcher lords, but the fourteenth century brought further hardship for the settlement as the Black Death hit the area in 1340 and 1350.
Further tragedy hit Trellech though when the town was burnt down in the early part of the fifteenth century.

The blame for this has been put down to Owain Glyndr and his men. Owain was the last native Prince of Wales, and the man who led an unsuccessful rebellion against the English crown.

Despite this destruction, Trellech still existed in some form, as it had a mayor and market recorded in 1695.

At some point the old settlement disappeared and the new village appeared, and the original site of the four hundred burgages was lost.

Trellech's Holy Well - Roy Parkhouse - CC-BY-SA-2.0

The local Monmouth Archaeological Society has been searching for the exact location for the last thirty years. There only point of reference was the local church, St Nicholas’, a church that has been dated back to the 13th century, making it part of the original settlement.

Since 2004 the Monmouth Archaeological Society has been digging to the south of the present village. One member of the Society was so convinced that they were on the right track he (Stuart Wilson) brought a field to enable further excavations. Wilson’s story was told on the BBC Radio 4 programme “The Boy Who Bought a Field” in 2006.

Excavating the field has proved to show some success in recent years. Walls of houses have been uncovered as has yard-paving. Ceramic finds have also been discovered indicating that the village was burnt down in the 1290′s. The Society believes that the evidence points to a severe fire destroying about a hundred of the burgages. This fire they blame on Welsh nationalists trying to drive out the Norman English from the settlement.

Many settlements throughout the British Isles disappeared during the mediaeval period. Some disappeared due to the population being wiped out by the Black Death, other settlements were also flattened to allow the landscaping of huge country estates.

Trellech though is by far the largest settlement known to have disappeared from the British landscape. Whether it is a true lost city though is debatable because of the existence of St Nicholas’ church and Trellech castle pinpointing at least the rough location.

Copyright - First Published 28th March 2008