Llantarnam Abbey

Llantarnam Abbey is a Grade II*-listed abbey of the Sisters of St Joseph of Annecy and a former Cistercian monastery located in Llantarnam, Cwmbran in the county borough of Torfaen in southeast Wales.

It was founded as a daughter house of Strata Florida Abbey, Ceredigion. Llantarnam Abbey took its place among the Welsh Cistercian abbeys as the revival of political power supported the growth of the Order during the twelfth century. Although various dates are suggested for the year of its foundation, it can be safely attributed to have been founded in the last quarter of the twelfth century. It was to remain active for over three hundred and fifty years before the suppression of 1536 finally closed its doors on 27 August 1536. Later that century, the abbey’s vast tracts of lands, including the immediate abbey environs, were sold into the hands of the Morgan family. The landscape associated with the abbey stayed largely intact until the development of Cwmbran new town in 1949.

After its dissolution in 1536, William Morgan of Pentrebach bought the property in 1554 and he later became a Member of Parliament (MP) and High Sheriff. The abbey may have been built by his son Edward Morgan, also a MP and High Sheriff, who was repeatedly fined for his recusancy. His son, Sir Edward Morgan, 1st Baronet was a noted Royalist during the Civil War. The second baronet, also Edward, sheltered the Jesuit priest who was executed at Usk in 1679, Saint David Lewis. The house was only intermittently occupied from then until it came into the hands of Reginald Blewitt. He rebuilt it in Tudor Revival style to the designs of Thomas Henry Wyatt in 1834–36. The renovation supposedly cost £60,000 and that expense, coupled with the collapse of his finances, forced Blewitt into exile from 1851 to 1868. After his death a decade later, the nephew who inherited the property sold the abbey in 1895 to Sir Clifford Cory, colliery owner, shipping magnate and Liberal politician, who lived there until his death in 1941. After his death, it became a depot for the American Army during the Second World War. In 1946 it became again a monastic institution, in the hands of the Sisters of St Joseph of Annecy.

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