All Saints Church, Kemeys Commander-geograph

Kemeys Commander ( cy, Cemais Comawndwr) is a village in Monmouthshire, in

South East Wales South East Wales is a loosely defined region of Wales generally corresponding to the preserved counties of Mid Glamorgan, South Glamorgan and Gwent. Highly urbanised, it includes the cities of Cardiff and Newport as well as large towns in th ...

Location

Kemeys Commander, north-west of

Usk Usk ( cy, Brynbuga) is a town and community in Monmouthshire, Wales, northeast of Newport. It is located on the River Usk, which is spanned by an arched stone bridge at the western entrance to the town. Usk Castle, above the town, overlooks th ...

, comprises a few farms and cottages slightly off the main road leading to Abergavenny within a graceful bend of the River Usk. The village has the

parish church A parish church (or parochial church) in Christianity is the church which acts as the religious centre of a parish. In many parts of the world, especially in rural areas, the parish church may play a significant role in community activities, ...

of All Saints.

Origin of the name

Its unusual name is derived from the fact that the patronage of the church was at one time held by the Knights Templar and was a

commandery In the Middle Ages, a commandery (rarely commandry) was the smallest administrative division of the European landed properties of a military order. It was also the name of the house where the knights of the commandery lived.Anthony Luttrell and G ...

preceptory A preceptor (from Latin, "''praecepto''") is a teacher responsible for upholding a '' precept'', meaning a certain law or tradition. Buddhist monastic orders Senior Buddhist monks can become the preceptors for newly ordained monks. In the Buddh ...

, as their houses were termed. In the 16th century their successors, the

Knights Hospitaller The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem ( la, Ordo Fratrum Hospitalis Sancti Ioannis Hierosolymitani), commonly known as the Knights Hospitaller (), was a medieval and early modern Catholic military order. It was headq ...

, drew £2 13s. 4d. per annum from demesne lands in this

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one o ...

. There may have been a hermitage here in early days. It is, however, doubtful whether the Kemeys family ever held it, and they probably took their name from another Kemeys, Kemeys Inferior, nine miles (14 km) further down the River Usk. Both of these names are from the Welsh word ''cemais'' meaning 'bend in a river', and this is an apt description of the site of this village, which stands at the centre of a long bend of consistent radius. Despite the fact that the family did not actually take their surname from here, it was "farmed" by Edward Kemeys, perhaps as chaplain of the

chantry A chantry is an ecclesiastical term that may have either of two related meanings: # a chantry service, a Christian liturgy of prayers for the dead, which historically was an obiit, or # a chantry chapel, a building on private land, or an area i ...

St. Nicholas Saint Nicholas of Myra, ; la, Sanctus Nicolaus (traditionally 15 March 270 – 6 December 343), also known as Nicholas of Bari, was an early Christian bishop of Greek descent from the maritime city of Myra in Asia Minor (; modern-day Demre ...

in the parish church of

; in 1603 it belonged to an Edward Morgan. In 1799 Archdeacon William Coxe came here during his ''Historical Tour in Monmouthshire'' (published 1801) and wrote "We here mounted our horses and rode through thickets across the fields to Kemeys Commander, a small village". Coxe also visited the nearby village of Trostrey, recording of the church that its "situation is extremely wild and romantic; it stands ... remote from any inhabitation, and seems rather the solitary chapel of a hermit, than the church of a cultivated district."

The church

The Church of All Saints is held with Bettws Newydd nearby and has some interesting features. A small, low screen divides the

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

from the presbytery, taking the place of the usual

chancel In church architecture, the chancel is the space around the altar, including the choir and the sanctuary (sometimes called the presbytery), at the liturgical east end of a traditional Christian church building. It may terminate in an apse. Ov ...

arch as the whole building is contained under one roof; the screen is plain and not of good workmanship, the only ornamentation being slight columns with crocketed pinnacles on each side of the entry. The

altar An altar is a table or platform for the presentation of religious offerings, for sacrifices, or for other ritualistic purposes. Altars are found at shrines, temples, churches, and other places of worship. They are used particularly in paga ...

slab, apparently not pre-

Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...

, is severely mounted on plain stone squares and in keeping with the austere lines of the building. There are also a modern

trefoil A trefoil () is a graphic form composed of the outline of three overlapping rings, used in architecture and Christian symbolism, among other areas. The term is also applied to other symbols with a threefold shape. A similar shape with four ring ...

aumbry An ambry (or ''almery'', ''aumbry''; from the medieval form ''almarium'', cf. Lat. ''armārium'', "a place for keeping tools"; cf. O. Fr. ''aumoire'' and mod. armoire) is a recessed cabinet in the wall of a Christian church for storing sacred vesse ...

and a

piscina A piscina is a shallow basin placed near the altar of a church, or else in the vestry or sacristy, used for washing the communion vessels. The sacrarium is the drain itself. Anglicans usually refer to the basin, calling it a piscina. For Roman Ca ...

in the south wall. The east window is

Perpendicular In elementary geometry, two geometric objects are perpendicular if they intersect at a right angle (90 degrees or π/2 radians). The condition of perpendicularity may be represented graphically using the ''perpendicular symbol'', ⟂. It ca ...

and high, and on the south side of the nave is an exceedingly small window which lighted the former rood loft. The beams of the slightly flattened

barrel roof A barrel roof is a curved roof that, especially from below, is curved like a cut-away barrel. They have some advantages over dome roofs, especially being able to cover rectangular buildings, due to their uniform cross-section. Barrel vault ...

and the wall-plate are of some age. The font is octagonal. The small south door has been built in, and entrance to the building is through the timbered west porch, above which is a turret containing two bells, one of which is of 13th-century date but slightly smaller than those at Gwernesney. Only the steps and base remain of the churchyard cross. In the middle of the 16th century, the provision of a light in the church, probably that before the

high altar An altar is a table or platform for the presentation of religious offerings, for sacrifices, or for other ritualistic purposes. Altars are found at shrines, temples, churches, and other places of worship. They are used particularly in paganis ...

, was charged upon three acres of land in the parish. Church Farmhouse in the hamlet retains many features of the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (800 BC to AD ...

period.

Chain Bridge

Chain Bridge, to the north of the village, takes the B4598

to Abergavenny roa

over the River Usk. A bridge was here as early as the 16th century, but was washed away in winter floods in 1690 and was eventually replaced, in 1730, by a solid

oak An oak is a tree or shrub in the genus ''Quercus'' (; Latin "oak tree") of the beech family, Fagaceae. There are approximately 500 extant species of oaks. The common name "oak" also appears in the names of species in related genera, notably ''L ...

structure known as Pont Kemeys. This bridge in turn was replaced, in 1829, by a

chain bridge A chain bridge is a historic form of suspension bridge for which chains or eyebars were used instead of wire ropes to carry the bridge deck. A famous example is the Széchenyi Chain Bridge in Budapest. Construction types are, as for other suspen ...

built by Brown Lenox of

Pontypridd () ( colloquially: Ponty) is a town and a community in Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales. Geography comprises the electoral wards of , Hawthorn, Pontypridd Town, 'Rhondda', Rhydyfelin Central/Ilan ( Rhydfelen), Trallwng ( Trallwn) and Treforest (). ...

– supported by sturdy chains, hence the name. The current bridge, which was built between 1905 and 1906 by George Palmer of Neath, is an

iron Iron () is a chemical element with Symbol (chemistry), symbol Fe (from la, Wikt:ferrum, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 element, group 8 of the periodic table. It is, Abundanc ...

arch with green-painted girders which is still referred to as Chain Bridge. The

Centre for Ecology and Hydrology The UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (UKCEH) is a centre for excellence in environmental science across water, land and air. The organisation has a long history of investigating, monitoring and modelling environmental change, and its science ma ...

operates a river monitoring station at Chain Bridge which measures the river's flow rate.

Kemeys Folly

Kemeys Folly is a former hunting lodge built in 1712 by George Kemeys and rebuilt in the early 20th century as a home for the High Sheriff of Monmouthshire. It was converted as a private home in 2005-2011 and featured on the

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...

programme, '' Grand Designs''.

References

External links

Monumental Inscriptions for All Saints Church
{{authority control Villages in Monmouthshire