Monknash Grange

 grange, historic ruins

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The most impressive surviving remains of a monastic grange in Glamorgan are those at Monknash (Figs.144-6; Pis. 4, 36). The grange came into existence in the earliest years of the Abbey (founded in 1130), from a grant by Richard de Granville.

The basic feature of the surviving remains of the grange (see Fig. 144) is a large quadrangular (or perhaps more correctly pentagonal) enclosure, measuring about 320m along the N.E. side which flanks the Heol Las, the road (on the line of the medieval 'green way') from Marcross to Monknash and on to St. Brides Major; 262m along the S.E. side; 214m along the S.W. side; and 159m and 85m respectively along the two stretches of the slightly angled N.W. side. The area thus enclosed is about 20 acres. The boundary has been destroyed by modern houses and walls along the S.E. side and the S.E. half of the N.E. side, but along the S.W. side and the remainder of the N.E. side it can be traced as a bank (doubled along the S.E. half of the S.W. side) 5-8 m wide and 50-100 cm high, and along the N.W. side as a ditch 5m wide and 1m deep. Within this, the N.W. and S.W. sides remain of a smaller and more strictly rectilinear enclosure, about 152m each way (6 acres), defined by a bank 5-7 m wide and 1 m high with external ditch 6-8 m wide and 60-l00cm deep.