“Cusop as a part of Brycheiniog” - Talk by Paul Remfry

On Saturday 11th January we welcomed Historian and castle expert Paul Remfry with an illustrated talk “Cusop as a part of Brycheiniog” and had a full hall.

Thanks to Lesley Arrowsmith for this write up on her blog ‘Life in Hay’

“Paul Remfry was talking about the Baskerville family and their lordship of Cusop. He was also talking about the difficulties in interpreting medieval documents - were Ralph, Roger and Robert brothers, for instance? We know the mother of one of them was called Juliana, but was she the mother of the other two - or were they some sort of cousin or nephew? Some of the documents were written long after the events they recorded - the Diocese of Llandaff, which had land holdings locally, claimed to have records dating back to 500AD - but did they really? Or were they writing documents that just claimed that they had always held that land?

Another famous chronicler of medieval Wales was Gerald of Wales - who was notoriously selective in his recording of facts, especially concerning families who he considered to have blocked his ambitions to be Archbishop of Wales (there was no Archbishop of Wales until 1924, when the Welsh Church finally became independent from the Church of England). So it was Gerald who attributed a quotation to Henry II about how terrible the Baskerville family were, presumably because he had fallen out with the Baskervilles himself.

What we do know is that Ralph who died in 1086 held most of the Baskerville lands, including Cusop, and across to near Aberystwyth and in the other direction across the Midlands, and there is a paper trail through the records that survive showing that Cusop was passed down the family until it came to a family called the Clanvowes, which may be a corruption of the Welsh Llanfair or Llanfawr - and one of the Clanvowes may have married a Baskerville daughter. Possibly.

But what about the time before the Baskervilles arrived? They were Normans, so before 1066, Cusop was Welsh, and there are various Welsh princes who were probably lords of Cusop. It all got quite complicated, and also included stories about the Earl of Hereford known as Ralph the Timid!

At any rate, it was the Normans who built several of the local castles - Hay, Clyro, and Cusop all have a very similar plan, though Cusop doesn't seem to have a motte like the others, and Hay became far more elaborate over the centuries.

It was a fascinating talk, about a complex and confusing period of history (though doubtless the original Baskervilles would have been quite clear about who was related to who, and which brother owned which lands).”