hvered wrote:Why are there so many French names on Caldey Island? Is it something to do with Cistercian monks getting their hands dirty here?
Close. It now looks like they might have been Tironensian monks from France, who prided themselves on doing the building work. See also the Tironensian Abbey of St.Dogmael, close to Cardigan, coincidentally on the same line of longitude.
The first house of the order in Wales was St Dogmaels, Pembrokeshire, which was founded c. 1113. Soon therafter it established two daughter-houses in Pembrokeshire, namely, Pill and Caldy.
http://www.monasticwales.org/order/6
For these reasons, I've just added St.Dogmael to the TME map.
https://tme.cartodb.com/tables/the_mega ... empire/map
The order's first house in Wales, St Dogmaels, Pembrokeshire, which was established on the site of a clas (early Celtic church), which dated back to at least 600 AD.
In Scotland, the Tironensians were the monks and master craftsmen who built and occupied (until the Reformation) the abbeys of Selkirk (later re-located to Kelso (1128), Arbroath (1178), and Kilwinning (1140+).
The abbey (Tiron in France) owned at least one ship that traded in Scotland and Northumberland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tironensian_Order
In due course, Mick will explain their special place in the making of Welsh history.