Strata Florida is an enchanting spot in the western heartlands of Wales among the folds of the Cambrian Mountains. A once a great Cistercian monastery in a landscape of immense spiritual importance to the Welsh people for a thousand years.
The conserved ruins of the old Abbey church and part of the cloisters are in the care of Cadw, the Welsh Government's heritage agency, and can be visited by the public from Easter to late autumn. In fact, these remains are only a small fraction of what was once a much larger Abbey stretching over an area of 126 acres where the rest survives below ground as a well-preserved archaeology.
The Strata Florida Trust has bought the complex of historic farm buildings, called Mynachlog Fawr or Great Abbey, which lie immediately to the south of the monument. This includes a house which was once the home of the gentry family, the Stedmans, who owned the Abbey site after the Dissolution of 1539. Later it became a farm run by the Arch family.
All these lie in a fascinating historic landscape which contains the vast remains of human activity including the work of the Abbey monks themselves. There are footpaths and heritage walks which take the visitor out into woodland, along riversides, up mountains and onto the edge of the great bog of Cors Caron.
The ruins of the Abbey lie just to the east of the village of Pontrhydfendigaid, near Tregaron in Ceredigion, and on the western edge of the Cambrian Mountains in mid Wales.
This project has received RCDF funding through the Welsh Government Rural Communities - Rural Development Programme 2014-2020, which is funded by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development and the Welsh Government.
For more information visit Strata Florida
Strata Florida on Heno - January 2019 (English subtitles).