Call me a wimp but whenever I see that the Met Office has issued a weather warning of any colour I think twice about venturing outdoors, and double twice about doing so in a car on a motorway. Last week in the brief hiatus between Storm Eunice (Red) and Storm Franklin (Amber) I had a text from someone saying that they were on the M4 going to a wedding at Margam Abbey and a little post-traumatic stress shiver ran down my spine. Not because of the weather and not because of the wedding but you know the way I’ve got history in most places in Wales? Well, Margam is no exception.
It’s not the memory of the map reading course I did at Margam Park. That was the day that I began my life-long tendency to combine navigational misjudgements with an air of unwarranted confidence that has bordered on – and sometimes achieved – recklessness; it was the day I ended up thigh deep in a rancid, smelly drainage sump on the north slope of Margam mountain when I should have been outside the castle on the southern side. And it’s not about the winter “Feeding the Deers” event where I suffered concussion thanks to an unfortunate incident with a trailer load of turnips. Or the Christmas 5K run where I was beaten into last place by an inflatable Gingerbread man. It was not even the Margam Eisteddfod when the car I was being given a lift in was impaled by a tractor with one of those spikes used for spearing big bales of hay – except that the tractor driver mistook Eifion’s brand new Audi for animal fodder, stabbed through the front grille of the car, the engine and the radio, with the metal spike finally stopping between Eifion in the driver’s seat and me in the passenger’s seat. I’m not going to go into more detail about any of those things because none of them is what gives me history with Margam.
Have you ever wondered when history begins? On this occasion it was the late spring evening in 1996 when I decided to go on an advertised “Archaeology Walk to a Local Church”. The year is important because it was pre-mobile phone time however that doesn’t excuse my rash behaviour in actually joining the group when I found out that the local church in question was Margam Abbey, a good 20 miles away from where we met up. Gary (walk leader who looked about 16) had failed to mention on the posters that we’d be driving to Margam to start the walk. 1996 was also pre me-having-a-car time so I squidged in a mini with 4 elderly women who didn’t know each other and – apart from the fact that they all had ordered similar pastel coloured rain jackets from the same catalogue – had nothing in common. Also they didn’t know what the evening would entail but they all separately knew Gary (from church, from his mother, from the shop where he worked on Saturdays and from being a dinner lady at his school) and had come along to support him because he was a nice boy. By the time we reached Margam Country Park it was about 7 o’clock in the evening on what had been a warm, dry and sunny day. The warden of the park was just closing the gates but when Gary said he’d arranged with the council for a tour of the grounds, it was agreed that the park would remain open for another half hour. In retrospect, what Gary should have done was not insist that the group’s cars were left in a layby on the main road because if we’d all stopped inside the park, the warden would have realised that we hadn’t left when he locked up the gates for the night. Anyway what’s past is past and hindsight is a wonderful thing etc so let’s get back to the history lesson.
We had a little wander around the medieval ruins near the Orangery and then walked through a gateway cut in the high stone boundary walls which led into the cemetery of Margam Abbey proper. This is where Gary’s arrangements worked because a local bloke called Stan was waiting to show us the inside of the church, point out things of interest and particularly direct our attention to the collection box where donations would be welcome. As Georgian churches go, Margam Abbey is a pretty stonking example and if you’re in the area, well worth a visit unless what you want is an archaeology walk in which case it isn’t. I was sitting on a pew coming to this conclusion when the raincoat ladies shuffled over and said that Stan had suggested they went round the back to see the extra statues and why didn’t I join them. Perhaps I’ve led a sheltered life but I didn’t expect the extra statues round the back to be the mausoleum where the incredibly wealthy Talbot family had seen fit to commission post-mortem images of themselves carved in shiny white stone. And I also didn’t expect the carvers of said statues to have been so forensically accurate in their portrayal of the facial expressions of each Talbot as they had met their doom. Theodore (hunting accident) was caught writhing in some horrific death spasm and I don’t imagine his marble memorial brought much comfort to any grieving relatives. After much tutting, the raincoat ladies and I eventually made our way back into the Abbey and found to our surprise that apart from the whispy glow given by a small sanctuary candle, all of the lights were off and the building was empty.
“Stan?” called Pastel Pink raincoat. “Gary? Anyone?”
Pastel Green rattled the handle of the main door. “Locked,” she announced. “We won’t be getting out that way.”
“Surely they wouldn’t have gone without us?” I said. “Surely Gary would know we were missing?”
Pastels Violet and Blue didn’t seem to be engaged in exit strategies and had started collecting the needlepoint kneelers and arranging them on pews as pillows. Violet patted me gently on the shoulder and said, “You’re young, yet,” and Blue added “cwtching down here we’ll be, like as not, so time to get comfy-womfy.”
I wasn’t prepared to spend the night with a quartet of nearly identically dressed geriatrics if it could possibly be avoided, particularly ones who were grammatical anarchists with a tendency to make up words. I grabbed the sanctuary candle and found the small side door by which we’d entered the Abbey, the one which led into the cemetery. It was unlocked as was the gate in the high stone boundary wall which led us back into the grounds of Margam Park. By now it was dark so I offer a couple of points here which may be of interest to anyone who finds themselves in a similar situation: firstly, it’s never as straightforward to find your way to the exit of a country park after nightfall as it is in daylight; secondly, the deers of Margam own the place once the gates are closed and wander everywhere looking for turnips; thirdly, you might not realise that the multitude of luminescent yellow lights that surround you are actually deer eyes staring in your direction and some of your party may scream, faint or wet themselves; finally scaling ornamental ironwork gates designed to keep bouncy deers in is not an easy task for anyone but elderly ladies in pastel coloured raincoats may be motivated to find hitherto unknown gymnastic abilities when they notice that a stag is bearing down on them at speed.
I subscribe to the philosophy that those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it so none of the photographs in this blog are of Margam cos I haven’t been there in years. And as I’m not going back any time soon please accept these images of Llangeinor Mountain (once owned by the medieval monks of Margam Abbey) and the donkeys who live there as a substitute.
