In 1129 Richard de Granville granted his fee, situated on the west bank of the river NEATH, West Glamorgan to the Norman abbey of Holy Trinity at Savigny for the foundation of a new monastery. A yeare later Abbot Richard (d. 1145) and his twelve monks arrived from Savigny and a new community at Neath was formed: it was the second daughter-house of Savigny in England and Wales. The monks soon found that their lands were far too scattered to be managed properly and during the 1190s a plan was put forward for the monastery to move to the site of its property at Exford in Somerset. plan was thwarted when, in 1198, the abbey of Cleeve was established barely ten miles from the site at Exford.
Building work for CLEEVE Abbey, Somerset had begun by 1198 and the monastery was to be one of the last Cistercian foundations to be made in England. The new abbey was named Vallis Florida, although it has always been generally referred to as Cleeve. It took a hundred years before the first set of buildings was completed, and during this time the numbers grew, until by about 1300 the community had grown from the initial twelve to a community of twenty-eight monks.
Robert, earl of Gloucester, founded MARGAM Abbey only short time before his death. It was a few weeks after Robert’s death that the first colony of monks arrived from Clairvaux. The site he allocated to the abbey comprised of 18 000 acres of land near the west coast of the lordship of Glamorgan: the original endowment consisted of ‘all the land between the Kenfig and Afan rivers from the brow of the mountains to the sea. Over the next century the monks acquired a fairly compact chain of estates across the vale and border vale of Glamorgan. Writing in the late twelfth century, Gerald of Wales described Abbot Cynan as ‘a learned man and one discreet in his behaviour’. He added that ‘of all the houses belonging to the Cistercian Order in Wales this was by far the most renowned for alms and charity. The monastery was also badly hit during the rebellion of Owain Glyn Dwr in the early fifteenth century. In 1210, King John stayed at the abbey with his army en route to Ireland, and again on his return three months later. The Annals de Margan is one of the most valuable surviving Welsh monastic chronicles. It begins with the death of Edward the Confessor and breaks off abruptly in 1232.
From the yeare 1185 onwards the chronicle is regarded as the most valuable primary source for Glamorgan history. The ‘Book of Taliesin’, one of the ‘Four Ancient Books of Wales’, has also been ascribed to Margam Abbey. CLEEVE was founded sometime between 1186 and 1191 by William de Roumare II, earl of Lincoln, whose grandfather, the earl of Lincoln, had founded Revesby Abbey in 1143.(1) William de Roumare had a grant of the Crown estate of Cleeve in Somerset and gave all these lands to the monks of St. Laurence of Revesby to the end that Hugh, the abbot of Revesby, might found a daughter house upon this site.
Between 1280 and 1320 in NEATH, the twelfth-century Romanesque church was replaced by a new Gothic construction. The scheme attracted the attention of King Edward I and, on a visit to Neath in 1284, he presented the abbey with a beautiful canopy, intended for the High Altar.After the death of Gilbert de Clare in 1314 rebellion broke out in Glamorgan.
During the beginning of the sixteenth century, the southern end of the dormitory and the refectory ranges were adapted to provide the abbot with substantial private accommodation. From about 1509 until the Dissolution these new apartments were occupied by Abbot Leyshon Thomas, the most influential Cistercian abbot of late medieval Wales. However, the house evaded suppression for only three years, and was finally dissolved with the larger monasteries in 1539. A few years later Cromwell (d. 1545) purchased the site and converted parts of the monastic buildings into an impressive Tudor mansion. Today the remains include much of the east and west ranges of the monastic buildings, the gothic church and the mansion. It has recently been suggested that the ‘Red Book of Hergest’, one of the ‘Four Ancient Books of Wales’, normally ascribed to Strata Florida, was in fact copied in a Glamorgan monastery – probably Neath.