Nanteos mansion

 

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 king’s 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. 

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

E-bost: legendarylandmarks@hotmail.co.uk

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.

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:

Left: Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s depiction of Sir Galahad at the Grail chapel.

Date & TIME: 26/8/07 - 2/9/07

VENUE (LOCATION): Nanteos Estate, near Aberystwyth

ADMISSION: Free

ACCESS: 9am - 5pm, access is via an uneven woodland footpath and therefore unsuitable for some disabled visitors.

DIRECTIONS: 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

PARKING:  Parking can be found adjacent to the hotel

For Further Details Contact Chris here.

The Artwork:

The work draws its inspiration from the local legend of the Nanteos Cup: a cup of strange powers that was once said to reside at Nanteos mansion and was speculated by some more eccentric scholars to be the Holy Grail itself.  Here I take the idea of the grail myths but strip away the later embellishments and look at the earliest Welsh and Celtic stories concerning this magical cup.  There are several tales in early Welsh myth in which a hero, either Arthur or Bran travels to the underworld or to Ireland and brings back a magical cauldron.  I looked at some examples of early Irish cauldrons and wanted to use this as inspiration for creating a sculptural piece from recycled materials.  I employed recycled metal from drinks cans and the like upon a frame for added strength.  The use of recycled drinks cans references both the cup/cauldron’s function as a drinking vessel but also the way in which components from so many varying and disparate sources have combined to produce a coherent legendary form.