CEREDIGION, WALES—Traces of the Llanllyr nunnery have been discovered near the village of Pontrhydfendigaid in Mid Wales, along with its cemetery and a Tudor mansion. The rare medieval convent had been founded in 1180 by Lord Rhys ap Gruffudd, a Welsh prince, as a daughter house of Strata Florida, a former Cistercian monastery that was a center of Welsh culture. “We know the nuns farmed sheep and cattle successfully and they would have tended mills, orchards and fishponds,” Jemma Bezant of the University of Wales Trinity Saint David told BBC News. Her team is still looking for the medieval chapel and wants to learn more about the cemetery, but the researchers do not expect to find any skeletal remains in the acidic soil. “We have already recovered fragments of sumptuous glazed floor tiles indicating that the nunnery was lavishly built and decorated,” Bezant added.
