Qualla: Aberconwy Abbey

Aberconwy Abbey: Introduction

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Rhion assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. Llywelyn the Great died in April 1240 and was buried at his own abbey on the west bank of the Conwy estuary. His son Dafydd was laid beside him six years later. By 1283 their tombs lay in the way of Edward I of England, who had decided that the abbey site would make an excellent foundation for a colonial castle and walled town. The monks were ordered eight miles upriver to a new home at Maenan. The bones of the Welsh princes were lifted and moved with them. The abbey church was repurposed as the parish church of Conwy, where parts of it still stand: the west wall with its three lancet windows, the lower parts of the east wall, the fine west doorway probably moved from the abbey chapter house. Everything else of Aberconwy is gone.

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Rhion assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Aberconwy Abbey: Cistercians at the river mouth

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Wolfgang Sauber, CC BY-SA 3.0. The story begins quietly. In 1186 a group of Cistercian monks from Strata Florida Abbey, in mid-Wales, set up a daughter house at Rhedynog Felen near Caernarfon. About four or five years later they moved east to the mouth of the River Conwy. In 1199, Llywelyn ap Iorwerth - the pr...

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Image: Wolfgang Sauber | CC BY-SA 3.0

Aberconwy Abbey: Tombs of the princes

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit No machine-readable author provided. Rhion assumed (based on copyright claims)., Public domain. Llywelyn the Great died at Aberconwy on 11 April 1240 and was buried in the abbey church. His son and successor, Dafydd ap Llywelyn, was buried beside him in 1246. Two years later, in 1248, the abbot of Aberconwy and the abbot of Strata Florida arranged for the remains of Llywely...

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Image: No machine-readable author provided. Rhion assumed (based on copyright claims). | Public domain

Aberconwy Abbey: 1282: the trap

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0. Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, called Tywysog Cymru - Prince of Wales - had spent decades navigating the relationship between Gwynedd and the English crown. In 1282 Edward I came north with one of the largest armies medieval England had ever assembled, encircling Snowdonia. On 11 December...

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Image: Richard Croft | CC BY-SA 2.0

Aberconwy Abbey: Maenan and dissolution

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JohnArmagh, Public domain. The move was complete by 1284. The new Maenan Abbey functioned for another two and a half centuries, far enough up the valley to be quieter and harder to reach, with land grants that kept it economically viable. In the fifteenth century the abbot John ap Rhys became involved in a...

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Image: JohnArmagh | Public domain

Aberconwy Abbey: What is still there

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dara Jasumani, CC BY-SA 2.0. If you want to find Aberconwy Abbey now, look at the parish church of St Mary and All Saints inside the walls of Conwy. The three lancet windows in the west wall, the lower courses of the east wall, the fine west doorway - all are believed to survive from the abbey church the mon...

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Image: Dara Jasumani | CC BY-SA 2.0