Venerable and grand, but wholly devoid of ornament, it partakes of the character of the surrounding scenery. Not a single tendril of ivy decorates the massive walls of the structure, and but a sprinkling of shrubs and light branchy trees fringe the high parapets, or shade the broken fragments beneath. “Where rev’rend shrines in Gothic grandeur stood, The nettle or the noxious night-shade spreads; And ashlings, wafted from the neighbouring wood, Through the worn turrets wave their trembling heads.” The area of the church is not very extensive; the length is 212 feet; the breadth 50; and it measures 100 across the transepts. The roof has long since fallen in, and a great part of the south wall is now a prostrate ruin; but the view afforded of the interior, in consequence, is extremely grand and picturesque. A double row of pointed arches, reposing on massive piers, separate the side ailes from the nave; above which, divided from the Gothic form by a strait band of fascia, is a series of small circular arches: an intermixture and arrangement of the two forms that characterize the earliest use of Gothic architecture. Two lofty arches, rising from the middle of the church, still sustain a massive portion of the tower, whose doubtfully poised and ponderous bulk seriously menaces the adventurous explorer of the ruin. The grandeur of the western front cannot be passed unnoticed; nor, looking over the fragments of the choir, the fine view of the inside ruin, seen through the great eastern arch of the tower; neither is a small chapel adjoining the south transept, with a well-formed engrained roof, to be neglected: the transept is remarkable for a large Norman archway that led into the south aile of the choir. Many portions of building appear in detached heaps near the abbey church, particularly a bold arch in a neighbouring barn, which seems to have formed the principal entrance to the abbey. Among these the natives point out a low subterraneous passage, faced with hewn stone, which they suppose to have had a connexion with Old Castle, about three miles distant. St. David, the uncle of king Arthur (say ancient legends), was so struck with this sequestered recess, then almost unconscious of a human footstep, that he built a chapel on the spot, and passed many years in it as a hermit. William, a retainer of the earl of Hereford’s in the reign of William Rufus, being led into the valley in pursuit of a deer, espied the hermitage. The deep solitude of the place, and the mysterious appearance of the building, conspired to fill him with religious-enthusiasm; and he instantly disclaimed all worldly enjoyments for a life of prayer and mortification.