Walls and battlements

Here you are standing within the high medieval walls of Cathedral Close. The wall has battlements and big wooden gates, with holes in the gate posts so that the gates can be securely barred. In 1698 the herald Hugh Thomas described the Close as ‘looking more like a Town… having no less than Three Great Gates for Entrance into the outward court’. Just outside the gate you can see two niches. Before the Reformation there would have been statues in these niches, or spaces above the main gates, for example of the Priory’s patron saint, St John the Evangelist, and the Virgin Mary. Protestants tended to see statues as idolatrous (as a physical object that is worshipped as a God, instead of God himself), so they were generally removed from church sites – though in Wales this often happened later as radical Protestantism was not popular here. Some statues survived in Welsh churches until the First Civil War of 1642-7. The walls enclose the whole of Cathedral Close. When the cathedral was a priory, it would have enclosed the priory estate, providing security. After the priory was suppressed in 1536, and the priory became a parish church, the lands surrounding it were taken into private ownership. The walls and gates would have been an asset to the owners of the Priory House and the other buildings within the walls.

There are 14 different stories on the trail. You can explore them in any order. Just point your phone camera at the QR code when you spot the Cathedral logo. You can download the trail map here.