Share this page!

Maybe Scrolly?
Friendless Churches Profile picture
Twitter logo
5 Apr, 8 tweets, 3 min read
Grandson of a king called “superbus tyrannus”, 7th-c Cynhaiarn lost his brother and father in battle. Another brother was mauled by animals but pieced back together like Frankenstein’s Monster…

To escape, he paddled out to the middle of a lake and built a cell there...

#thread
We know very little about St Cynhaiarn. He was the son of Cyndrwyn. His brother was Cynddylan, who plundered Lichfield monastery and slaughtered “book-clutching monks”. Upon Cynddylan's, his sister Heledd wrote Canu Heledd – a series of short poems describing her loss.

2/
After this tragedy, Cynhaiarn and some his brothers turned to God. And to learn, they went to none other than St Beuno.

St Beuno was a popular guy. To get away from pupils and parishioners, he used to wade out into the middle of a river at and kneel on a stone to pray.

3/
One night, Beuno was out there praying, when Cynhaiarn’s brother Aelhaiarn approached him. Incensed at being disturbed, Beuno muttered that God should teach that man a lesson. (Or something more fitting to a 7th-century saint.)

4/
At once, wild animals burst through the woodland and ripped poor Aelhaiarn to pieces! Beuno was horrified. He shooed away the beasts and looked at the dismembered body before him. It was then that he recognised that it was his student, Aelhaiarn!!

5/
Beuno dashed about gathering up all the bits of Aelhaiarn’s body. He reassembled the bits and brought Aelhaiarn back to life! But, upon completion he noticed that Aelhaiarn was missing an eyebrow…

6/
Searching about him for something eyebrow shaped, Beuno took the iron tip of his staff and fixed it to Aelhaiarn’s brow. From then on, Aelhaiarn was known as ‘iron eyebrow’.

7/
The photos in this thread are of the church at Ynyscynhaiarn, which stood on an island in the middle of Llyn Ystumllyn until the 1800s, when the lake was drained. The church is on the spot where Cynhaiarn rowed to all those centuries ago to build his cell and live in solitude.
8/

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Friendless Churches

Friendless Churches Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @friendschurches

Friendless Churches Profile picture
3 Apr
We’re delighted that roofing works at St Mary’s, Long Crichel, Dorset are complete. Long overdue, works included repairs to the oak wall-plate, renewing handmade plain clay tiles, installing new hamstone eave slabs and ridge tiles, and reinstating the angel in the apse.

#thread Image
The roof at St Mary’s is a king-post truss design, and ranges from 15th century in parts to 1850s in others, as the church was largely rebuilt after a fire in the early 19th century. We found the wall plate to be decayed in places, and new sections were spliced in.

2/ Image
When the builders started stripping the roof, they found that a vast number – far more than anticipated – of the clay roof tiles were cracked, disintegrating, defective. We ordered new handmade clay tiles, and managed to reuse about 50% of the existing tiles.

3/ Image
Read 7 tweets
Friendless Churches Profile picture
25 Mar
Around the font at St Mary Magdalene’s, Caldecote, you’ll find small circular hollows where the stone was ground out. The stone dust was mixed with wine or water, and drunk as medicine, a small cure all – or ‘poor man’s aspirin’ as it was known on the continent.

#thread
Medieval graffiti expert, @MedievalG, recently wrote an excellent blog on the etchings all over the walls, floors and doors of this weather-beaten, diminutive church. When writing his blog, he explained to us about these curious dots.

2/
Matthew explained how the ground stone dust from a consecrated building, and thus carried God’s blessing, and when mixed with liquid, was a general cure for all ailments.

3/
Read 6 tweets
Friendless Churches Profile picture
24 Mar
A bird's eye view of St Mary's, Mundon in Essex.

This wonderful brick and timber medieval church has been in our care since 1975. Before we adopted it, its fate was a race of how quickly it could collapse or be demolished...

#thread
We've undertaken many phases of repairs over the past 45 years, but with damage from an errant V-bomb in 1944, dereliction and vandalism in the 1970s, and the unstable soil, this is a church that needs a lot of care.

2/
St Mary's will always be a work in progress.

We’ve just completed repairs to the woodwork: windows, beams and boxpews. We've also installed monitors throughout to help us understand how, why and when the church is moving, so we can develop a plan for structural repairs.

3/
Read 4 tweets
Friendless Churches Profile picture
19 Mar
The mountain oak used to form the trusses at St Brothen’s, Llanfrothen were felled in the 1490s. At eye-level, they create a diminishing diamond shape. They form a continuous roof over the nave and chancel. It runs to 73ft (22m) and it takes 14,500 slates to cover it!
#thread
The church building dates to the 1200s, but the arch-braced roof trusses and cusped wind braces form a late 15th – early 16th c roof. They’re still doing their job perfectly. 
The site slopes from east to west, and until the 19th century, the church was part of the seashore.

2/
We’ve recently re-roofed the entire church. This was the first time in about 150 years the roof had been overhauled. A combination of slipped and broken slates, and nail fatigue meant we had to strip everything back and create a watertight covering.

3/
Read 7 tweets
Friendless Churches Profile picture
18 Mar
The tortoise slow combustion stove was a favourite heater for churches and chapels in the 19th century.

#thread
In 1830, ironmonger Charles Portway designed an enclosed metal stove to heat his shop in Halstead, Essex. It was so efficient and effective that his neighbours wanted one too, and Portway’s patented wood-burning and multi-fuel stoves were soon booming.
The stoves were renowned for their energy efficiency; fuel burned so slowly that they were nicknamed 'tortoise stoves'. Portway proudly adopted the tortoise brand, embellishing his stoves with a cast-iron tortoise and a motto inspired by Aesop's beloved fable: 'SLOW BUT SURE'.
Read 4 tweets
Friendless Churches Profile picture
17 Mar
St Patrick was ripped from his home as a teenager. After six years as a slave in the west of Ireland, he trekked the breadth of the island to get home to Britain. He would become the patron saint of Ireland, yet at the end of his life, he felt he had failed.

#thread
Patrick lived in the 5th century. Upon leaving Ireland in his early 20s, he devoted his life to Christ. He returned to Ireland after hearing Vox Hiberionacum – the voice of the Irish – in a dream.

2/
He became the patron saint of Ireland in the 7th century when the embellishment of St Patrick’s story began. Some of the biographers got quite creative, attributing all manner of miracles to the man – from snakes to sprouting staffs.

3/
Read 7 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get emails when @friendschurches has new unrolls!

Check out other threads from @friendschurches!

Read all threads by @friendschurches