Welsh Journals

Llanmihangel, near Cowbridge: A Tale of Family Fortunes and Misfortunes Hilary M. Thomas Llanmihangel is one of those rare places in the Vale of Glamorgan where time seems to have stood still and where the twentieth century has made few visible intrusions. An impressive mansion, one of the finest and most complete examples of an early gentry house in Glamorgan, together with adjacent contemporary farm buildings and the medieval church, the latter still lit only by oil lamps, form an integrated and harmonious landscape.1 Each element of that landscape provides its own evidence of personalities and events which have shaped the history of this small community over many centuries. But what survives in stone and timber is but a faint shadow of the past, for Llanmihangel, one of the smallest medieval parishes of the Vale, has a remarkably rich and colourful history to reveal. The oldest surviving building is the parish church. Externally, the most distinctive feature of this tiny edifice is the western tower with its saddle-back roof. Internally, medieval holy-water stoup, font and rood loft staircase have survived successive restorations. Few monuments are preserved within the church, but one of these provides its own flamboyant testimony to a past owner of the Llanmihangel estate. Dominating the south wall of the chancel, grand in scale and elaborate in design, it exudes wealth and influence. Executed in marble, classical in style, embellished with urn, drapes, cherubs heads and armorial achievements, and still bearing traces of its original heavy gilding, the monument commemorates Sir Humphrey Edwin, lord mayor of London, who died in 1707, his wife Dame Elizabeth who survived him by seven years, and their eldest son, Samuel, who died in 1722. A more restrained but equally grand monument on the north wall of the chancel commemorates Samuel's only son, Charles Edwin. An obscure comer of the Vale of Glamorgan seems an unlikely burial place for a seventeenth-century lord mayor of London. Who were the Edwins? When did they first become associated with Llanmihangel? How long did that association last? The answers to such questions must be sought in a complex pattern of descent and ownership of the Llanmihangel estate, traceable from the fifteenth century onwards, and in the fortunes and misfortunes of families involved in the political, social and economic history not only of Glamorgan and South Wales but of the country at large.