The Abbey Cwmhir Heritage Trust

Radnorshire’s Cwmhir Abbey (meaning ‘the abbey of the long valley’) now consists of a fishpond and the walls of the abbey church, set in an ‘amphitheatre of hills of stupendous grandeur’ according to an early traveller in Wales. Suppressed in 1537, the abbey was plundered for its stone and five out of the 14 delicately carved 13th-century arcades ended up beautifying the church at Llanidloes, some ten miles distant. This composite image based on drone photographs taken by Julian Ravest shows the abbey nave (at 78m in length, one of the longest of any abbey or cathedral church in Britain), and the palimpsest of undisturbed field monuments surrounding the church. Drone photogr