Abbey Cwmhir Museum

Museum

Explorer Tom

Abbey Cwmhir Museum has a very good answer to the question, “Where did the abbey go?” At Home Farm beside the ruined Cistercian church, its exhibition room brings carved stones, careful copies and research together, so the fragments outside begin to look like pieces of a much grander building. The Abbey Cwmhir Heritage Trust explains that five arches and six pillars from the abbey nave were taken to St Idloes Church in Llanidloes after the dissolution of the monastery. The display includes three-dimensional printed copies of carved capitals, placed where you can examine their leaves and shapes closely. Another copy shows the worn tympanum found at Home Farm in 1955; the original was set into a garden wall and has weathered since. These are reproductions presented openly as such, not newly uncovered originals. The trust uses these pieces to ask how the huge abbey was built and what its lost rooms may have looked like. I picture a medieval mason checking the capitals and complaining that the leaves are out of season; he is entirely my invention. The real carving, copying and detective work give you plenty to puzzle over without him. Take the free quick guide if one is available and carry its clues to the ruins. The trust says the exhibition room at Home Farm is open to visitors and that the Hamer family allows access to the abbey remains through the farm. Follow the signed approach and respect the working property. Give the displays a proper look before heading outdoors; a carved capital at eye level can make a broken wall feel enormous again.

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What is recorded here

Map note: There is a map point for Abbey Cwmhir Museum, a museum near Abbeycwmhir, Powys, Wales. See what else is around it before planning your day.

From OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors) n6573551083