St Teilo’s Church

Also known as:
St Teilo's Well
Nearest town:
Narberth (12km SSE)
OS reference:
SN099269
OS sheets:
145, 158
Latitude:
51° 54' 27.55 N
Longitude:
4° 45' 50.17 W
Added to TMA by

Articles

St Teilo’s Church

C
CARL Oct 11, 2010

Visited 10.10.10
Taking the minor road east out of Maenclochog, take the turning to the right when the road forks just past Temple Druid (remembering to visit the standing stone first of course!). You will shortly see Llandilo Isaf farm on your left – park here. There is a public right of way which runs through the farm’s garden. It’s a very odd feeling walking through someone’s garden even with permission, unlike walking across a field without permission! The remains of the church are just behind the farm building on the right..
There is an old wooden gate which gives access to the overgrown and sad looking graveyard. All that can be seen are headstones sticking out above the weeds and leaning against the walls. Most of the site is covered with impenetrable head high brambles. You can however make out the curving shape of the grave yard perimeter wall.
I like to visit old churches and it is sad to see when they have come to such a state. There are loved ones still buried here and clearly no one to keep things in shape or I guess, anyone to care any more? Just think how much was spent on head stones etc? Probably money the relatives could barely afford at the time? Makes you think. Despite the lovely weather I found this a rather sad place to visit.

Folklore

St Teilo’s Church
Christianised Site
Rhiannon
Rhiannon Mar 26, 2007

Just to the north east of the church, at ~SN101270 (there’s a public footpath to it from the road) is/was St Teilo’s Well. As Kammer’s added the area of the church, I won’t feel too guilty adding this. It is very long, and I have cut it down somewhat – but it’s such a popularly cited case (what with the alleged Celtic Head symbolism) that I thought it good to have the original account.

[The landlady of Llandeilo farm-house] told me of St. Teilo’s Well.. adding that it was considered to have the property of curing the whooping-cough. I asked her if there was any rite or ceremony necessary to be performed in order to derive benefit from the water. Certainly, I was told; the water must be lifted out of the well and given to the patient to drink by some member of the family: to be more accurate, I ought to say that this must be done by somebody born in the house. One of her sons, however, had told me previously, when I was busy with the inscriptions [at the church], that the water must be given to the patient by the heir, not by anybody else.

Then came my question how the water was lifted, or out of what the patient had to drink, to which I was answered that it was out of the skull. “What skull?” said I. “St. Teilo’s skull,” was the answer. “Where do you get the saint’s skull?” I asked. “Here it is”, was the answer, and I was given it to handle and examine.

I know next to nothing about skulls; but it struck me that it was a thick, strong skull*, and it called to my mind the story of the three churches which contended for the saint’s corpse. You all know it, probably: the contest became so keen that it had to be settled by prayer and fasting. So, in the morning, lo and behold! there were three corpses of St. Teilo – not simply one – and so like were they in features and stature that nobody could tell which were the corpses made to order and which the old one.

I should have guessed that the skull which I saw belonged to the former description, as not having been very much worn by its owner; but this I am forbidden to do by the fact that, according to the legend, this particular Llandeilo was not one of the three contending churches which bore away in triumpth a dead Teilo each. Another view, however, is possible: namely, that the story has been edited in such a way as to reduce a larger number of Teilos into three, in order to gratify the Welsh fondness for triads.

Since my visit to the neighbourhood I have been favoured with an account of the well as it is now current there [..] that the people around call the well Ffynnon yr Ychen, or the Oxen’s Well [..and] that the current story solves the difficulty as to the saint’s skull as follows:- The saint had a favourite maid-servant from the Pembrokeshire Llandeilo: she was a beautiful woman, and had the privilege of attending on the saint when he was on his death-bed. As his death was approaching, he gave his maid a strict and solemn command that at the end of a year’s time she was to take his skull to the other Llandeilo, and to leave it there to be a blessing to coming generations of men, who, when ailing, would have their health restored by drinking water out of it [..]

I would now only point out that we have here an instance of a well which was probably sacred before the time of St. Teilo: in fact, one would possibly be right in supposing that the sanctity of the well and its immediate surroundings was one of the causes of the site being chosen by a Christian missionary. But consider for a moment what has happened: the well-paganism has annexed the saint, and established a belief ascribing to him the skull used in the well-ritual. The landlady and her family, it is true, do not believe in the efficacy of the well, or take gifts from those who visit the well; but they continue, out of kindness, to hand the skull full of water to those who persevere in their belief in it.

In other words, the faith in the well continues in a measure intact, when the walls of the church have fallen into utter decay. Such is the great persistence of ancient beliefs; and in this particular instance we have a succession which seems to point unmistakeably to an ancient priesthood of this spring of water.

p75-77 of
Sacred Wells in Wales
John Rhys; T. E. Morris
Folklore, Vol. 4, No. 1. (Mar., 1893), pp. 55-79.

*In his Celtic Folklore, Welsh And Manx [1901] he says it was the ‘upper portion’ of the skull.

Some more details in the Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1892-3)l

Miscellaneous

St Teilo’s Church
Christianised Site
Kammer
Kammer Jun 25, 2004

In the book Saints and Stones (ISBN 1-84323-124-7) Davies and Eastham describe the evidence for prehistoric use of the site where the church now stands:

Archaeological aerial photography has shown that the circle of the churchyard is enclosed within a larger defensive bank and ditch which also bounds the farms of Prisk and Temple Druid, previously called Bwlch-y-Clawdd. The earlier name, meaning ‘the breach in the bank’ may derive from the defensive enclosure. It was rebuilt in the 1790s by the architect John Nash for Henry Bulkeley and the name changed to Temple Druid. There are a number of sites in west Wales which have defensive enclosures around the church and surrounding hamlet. They are difficult to date, but most are associated with prehistoric settlements and burials, and with early Christian stones.

Sites within 20km of St Teilo’s Church