The Honddhu Valley Threat
Here between the arc of the Fwddog Ridge and the spur of Hatteral Hill, William de Laoy, whose family held 116 manors, came on a deer-hunt, and like St. Hubert remained to pray. He built the little Norman church by the ruin of the cell of St. David, and in this same pastoral amphitheatre stand the more imposing ruins of Llanthony Priory, painted in Turner's water-colour. A little higher up the slope are traces of Walter Savage Landor's mansion and gardens on which he lost' £70,000. Here Robert de Bethune, Bishop of Hereford, wept as he said farewell to "a situation more truly calculated for religion than all the monasteries of the British isle." Under the head of the Valley, at Capel y ffin, Francis ICilvert helped Father Ignatius to build his monastery, and here Eric Gill founded his Guild with twenty acres of land he and his family cultivated for four years. Here I knew a sheep-farmer who had heard Father-Ignatius preach, and from the heights of the Gospel Pass between Lord Hereford's Knob and Hay Bluff I have looked back to see each peak of the Black Mountains walling the Valley folded plait-wise one behind the other and casting a violet shadow upon its neighbour. Between their titled sheep-pastures lay the patchwork quilt Of the valley floor, cornfields in gold, red allows, blue-dark woodland, tiny meads in green, threaded by the Honddhu in the open or under spiral-barked sweet chestnut. The mew of the buzzard is the voice of the solitudes above, but over the Honddhu the grey wagtail pirouettes, and the dipper walks under the water. Here I have collected folk-tales, eaten wild raspberries, talked with farmers on their ponies, read Kilvert's Diaries. Now this little Arcady, peopled by monks and husbandmen since the sixth century, loved by men of letters, is scheduled to become a reservoir.
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