Ein brenin a fu, ein brenin a fydd

Legendary  Landmarks

Nanteos mansion

An eighteenth century mansion situated south east of Aberystwyth.  Take the B4340 from Rhydyfelin and shortly afterward a small turning on the left up a track through the wood and along the private road until you reach the mansion/hotel which is situated at SN 620787.  The installation itself however is to be found in the nearby woodland at SN 625788. which can be accessed via a footpath from Capel Seion .

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Legend

 

The story begins with Joseph of Arimathea, the wealthy merchant uncle of Jesus who had paid for His tomb in the Holy Land.  Legend has it that Joseph took the cup from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper and used it to catch Christ’s blood as he hung upon the cross.  After the Crucifixion Joseph fled to Gaul with St. Philip, Mary Magdalene and others.  From here he was sent to Britain to convert the native population.  He landed at Glastonbury and was given land by king Arviragus where he set up the first church in Britain and hid the Grail which he had carried from Palestine.  Here the sacred cup remained for many generations guarded by the monks of Glastonbury abbey until at the beginning of the sixteenth century king Henry VIII began his ruthless dissolution of the monasteries across the country.  Treasures were either plundered or destroyed in the ensuing orgy of iconoclasm and the kings troops led by the infamous Thomas Cromwell himself descended upon the abbey.  Yet as fate would have it one of the monks was out visiting the sick with the miraculous cup at that very moment and thus it avoided destruction.  Fearing for their prized relic, seven of the remaining monks resolved to flee westward and undertake the dangerous journey over the mountains to Strata Florida abbey in west Wales.  When they reached their goal the cup rested at the abbey for a time attracting pilgrims from far and wide seeking the restorative powers of the cup, some even biting off sections of the wood around the rim in the hope of a cure.  Eventually however even this remote abbey was not safe from the grasping power of the state and the monks themselves grew old and frail, each passing the treasure on to the next until the last remaining monk entrusted the sacred chalice into the hands of the local land owners the Stedman family.  On his death bed he uttered the last words that they must guard it ‘until the church should claim its own’. 

 

The Steadman’s intermarried with the Powell family, the inhabitants of nearby Nanteos house, and the cup was removed here for safe keeping.  It was held here for generations, being made available to pilgrims and the local sick for healing purposes, indeed the cupboard in which it was kept was said to be filled with numerous written testaments proclaiming its miraculous healing properties.  Here the chalice, now known as the Nanteos cup, rested up until the last of the Powells’ line died and the mansion was sold in 1967.

 

The cup itself was removed from the house by its inheritors the Mirylees family who placed it in a bank vault in Hereford for safe keeping although the cup was said to have been brought back to Aberystwyth by the family in 1992.  The current whereabouts are unknown although it is certainly not at Nanteos which is now a hotel.  The owners do still supposedly however make water from the cup available to the sick and those seeking the long held miraculous properties of this legendary object.

 

Of course most of the above is pure legend although the cup itself and the testaments to its healing powers are real enough.  It is at worst a great story and well worth commemoration as part of this project whether it is or is not the Holy Grail in as much as that can be said to have a physical existence at all. 

ARTIST:Chris Collier and Local Craftspeople

Nanteos Mansion near Aberystwyth, the reputed one time resting place of the Holy Grail.

E-mail: legendarylandmarks@hotmail.co.uk

Press/Venues: for publicity material click here

An early photograph of the famed Nanteos Cup courtesy of the archives of the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth.  The cup is been said to have been made from olive wood and is of a first century Syrian style although others have contested this, claiming that its style is medieval and that it is made from wych-elm.  Although the Holy Grail legend dominates today there was once also speculation that this healing cup was manufactured from the wood of the True Cross and brought back to Britain during the Crusades.

October - December 2006

Part of the ruins of Strata Florida Abbey.  The self-denying Cistercian monks who built this important abbey were famed for seeking out desolate and lonely locations in which to found their communities.  This abbey in the quiet ‘Vale of Flowers’ in the remote hills north of Tregaron typifies this sense of isolation and austerity.  The abbey was founded in the twelfth century and grew to great importance, becoming the burial place for poets and princes from across Wales.   Of course for a time it also allegedly held the miraculous Nanteos cup.

To contact chris:

Proposed artwork:

This installation will seek to examine the legend of the Nanteos cup, those who believed it to have healing powers and those who believed it was the Holy Grail.  Although no longer kept at the mansion,  it seems logical to keep the location for the installation close by.  In the nearby Cottage Dingle wood, a charmingly and enigmatic little wood, where you might expect to meet anything from a polecat to a dryad, there is a low impact log cabin that is used by the Nanteos Woodland Group as a training centre.  This mysterious little building, nestling secretively and unexpectedly between the trees instantly recalls the strange, deserted chapel that Sir Galahad came across during his quest for the Grail.  The artwork will involve placing within this evocative a series of craft items that subtly suggest an air of reverence, sanctuary and sanctity without being too overtly reminiscent of a chapel.  The feel of the piece will be loosely based upon a 19^th century depiction of the scene by painter D.G. Rossetti in which Sir Galahad is depicted resting by the deserted shrine.  The sanctuary itself will contain a shelf surfaced in tiles made by a local ceramics artist.  The shrine will be decorated with candles, (non-lightable for safety) by a local candle maker, carving work by local crafts people and textile drapes and cloths by local textile artists.  It will also contain paintings and in the centre will stand a replica cup to be commissioned by a local wood-turner to recall the Nanteos cup.  The resulting sanctuary will be decked in outdoor fairylights connected to a handcranked 12V DC generator.  Visitors would be able to light up the installation temporarily, and will some effort, but to magical effect.  The purpose of using a human powered generator is to raise the issues of energy efficiency  and inspire debate on the environmental issues surrounding energy consumption.  The idea is to parallel the Grail story in which it could not be glimpsed by those who had sinned without their first considering and addressing their faults, similarly the full impact of the installation will only be visible to those willing to face the tiring illustration of the real cost of energy.  As an artist my role is not only to safeguard old stories and past culture, but also to place issues that will affect all of our futures on the cultural agenda.

 

Above: Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s depiction of Sir Galahad at the Grail chapel courtesy that will form the inspiration for the installation piece near Capel Seion.

The image to the left depicts an early impression of the location for this work.  As this is a very early and general impression it is lacking in any of the detail that will form the final work, for example the crafts pieces such as the tiles, carvings, wood turnings, altar cloths and candles etc.  Although it can not depict any of this detail which is of course the main substance of the work, because it has yet to be finalised, what it does do however is provide a general idea to help with the visualisation of the format that the work as a whole will take and the presentation of these smaller details as part of a coherent whole.