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Neath Abbey
Neath Abbey was founded in 1130 when monks from the Norman abbey of Savigny settled on lands granted to them by an Anglo-Norman knight, Richard of Granville. In 1147, Neath, along with some thirty other Savigniac monasteries in France and Britain, was absorbed into the rapidly expanding Cistercian order. The earliest monastic buildings do not survive, but the west cloister range was begun in the later twelfth century. Work continued on other buildings around the cloister until the mid- thirteenth century, and a new abbey church was built in the Decorated Gothic style between about 1280 and 1330. After the monastery’s suppression in 1539, a great Tudor house was built on the south-east corner of the cloister, incorporating the late medieval abbot’s lodging and other monastic buildings.The atmospheric ruins of the Tudor house are the most imposing remains at Neath. Hidden within them, behind a massive timber door, is a magnificent vaulted chamber that was probably the monk’s day room and may later have been the Tudor servant’s hall.
Glamorgan
Neath Abbey is easily accessible, lying only a few minutes north of the M4 off the A465. It has recently been used as a location for Dr Who
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