Regular readers may remember that Jean and I went to look at the rather special church at Garway not long ago, founded by the Templars (originally with a circular nave) then taken over by the Hospitallers, before they too were dissolved, after which it continued to serve such local community as there was - and still does.

Since then I've been to take a service there too, and also been recruited to talk to the local Heritage Group (https://www.garwayheritagegroup.co.uk/historic-garway/early-middle-ages) later in the year. As they know their local history far better than any outsider like me, that's quite a call. I can probably chip in with a little more about the Hospitallers because of my St John connections, but one of their number has actually written a small book on their acitivity in Herefordshire...

So I'm mining what I know about education in those times, and the manuscripts surviving from Pencoyd just down the road will be a great help. In one of those there is a list of folk owing money to the curate, and interestingly many of the names are in the Welsh style. That's not so surprising when you remember that these villages are in the old British/Welsh territory of Erging/Archenfield, but the very late fifteenth century (which is when the MSS date from) is a sharp reminder that Welsh was still being spoken there as late as that.

We know it was the local lingo a century before in 1397 because in the Hereford Cathedral Archives the manuscript notes survive (as HCA 1779) from the Bishop's Visitation of that date, recently published with a translation by Ian Forrest and Christopher Whittick (https://boydellandbrewer.com/9780907239840/the-visitation-of-hereford-diocese-in-1397/). You can look that up as a crib, but I've given you the real thing above, and as well as the usual shenanigans, the passage boxed in red tells us that "Item, the same Sir [ie the parochial chaplain Richard, not a knight] is not able to manage the cure of souls there because he doesn't know the Welsh language and most of the parishioners don't know the English language" - and indeed several of the parishioners cited from parishes in that area have Welsh names.

My photo taken with kind permission at Hereford Cathedral Library: not for further reproduction.