Event detail for site: Beddgelert

c. 1200: Foundation

Beddgelert Priory was founded by or in association with the princes of Gwynedd on an early medieval religious site.

Little is now known about the early history of the house for the foundation documents were destroyed in a fire of 1283.

It is thought that the monastery was established c. 1200x40 (most likely 1210x30), perhaps by Llywelyn ap Iowerth, to replace an earlier religious community that had occupied the site since the sixth century. Gerald of Wales (d. c. 1220) described a group of celibates living at the foot of Snowdon (see below). The arrival of the Cistercians at Aberconwy may have prompted these men to constitute themselves as a formal community and accept the Augustinian rule.
The new community took on the landed resources of the former early medieval house.

Gerald of Wales included an account of the Culdee community at Beddgelert in his Speculum Ecclesiae of c. 1220:
In Gwynedd ... there was a religious house of clerics at the foot of the mountain of Eryri, commonly called the Mountain of Snows ... Here there were clerics devoted to the service of God and living in a holy manner and in common, after te example of the Apostles. They were not bound to any order of monks or canons but were celibates or culdees, who served God and were given to abstinence, continence and renowned for their charity and hospitality.

People associated with this event

Llywelyn ab Iorwerth; Llywelyn Fawr , prince of Gwynedd (founder?)

Bibliographical sources

Printed sources

Medieval Religious Houses, England and Wales, ed. R. Neville Hadcock and David Knowles (Harlow, 1971) p. 147

Binns, Alison, Dedications of Religious Houses in England and Wales 1066-1216, Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, 1 (Boydell and Brewer: Woodbridge, 1989) p. 120

Bott, Alan, and Dunn, Margaret, A Guide to the Priory and Parish Church of St Mary Beddgelert, Gwynedd (Godalming, Surrey, 2004) p. 77

Gerald of Wales (Giraldus Cambrensis), Giraldi Cambresensis Opera, Rolls Series, 21, 8 vols, ed. J. S. Brewer, J. F. Dimock and G. F. Warner (London, 1861-1891) vol. 4, p. 167

Johns, C. N., 'The Celtic monasteries of north Wales', Transactions of the Caernarvonshire Historical Society, 21 (1960) p. 30

Robinson, David M., The Geography of Augustinian Settlement in Medieval England and Wales, BAR British Series, 80, 2 vols (Oxford, 1980) p. 277

Stöber, Karen, 'The Regular Canons in Wales', in The Regular Canons in the Medieval British Isles, Medieval Church Studies, 19 (Brepols: Turnhout, 2011), pp. 97-113

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