



The narrow road to Pennant Melangell, Powys. Photograph: Jim Perrin

Pennant Melangell lies two miles up the narrow road, hazel-hedged, thronged with coveys of now rare grey partridge (Perdix perdix) that hurry nervously in front of you and dart through fences into fields on either side. Steep, conifer-planted slopes crowd in. There is a sense that this must once have been a secret wilderness place – the kind to which story attaches, becoming thus places of pilgrimage.



The legend runs that Melangell fled to Wales to avoid a forced royal marriage in Ireland, and here under the hill barrier of the Berwyn found her place of prayer and retreat – until the day that Brochwel, prince of Powys, came hunting with hounds and horn. A hare sought shelter from them in Melangell’s robes and the dogs’ savagery was cowed by her sanctity. The prince, wishing to possess her beauty, offered marriage; when she refused, he granted her instead the valley-lands for a monastery.

It was an ancient site, perhaps bronze age, predating Melangell’s story, whose origin is sixth-century. The yew trees in the circular churchyard are 2,000 years old, the church and shrine Romanesque (though much restored). Among the graves grow ox-eye daisies, lady’s bedstraw, hawkweed and yarrow. By tradition, no hares were ever killed in the valley, being under St Melangell’s protection. Folklorists record that protective custom as still being observed in 1900.

Now this shrine for a patron saint of wild creatures lies at the centre of Llechwedd y Garth shooting estate. Those partridges are hopper-fed, fattened for the drives that begin on 1 September. Lott Estate Management of Telford has issued a glossy prospectus detailing the creatures available for killing here (grey partridge are back on the species list). The Purdeys are being oiled, the cheques have been sent.

Soon this quiet place, where one gunshot sounds like the world’s end, will echo and reverberate to fusillades. The limp and shattered bodies of this year’s broods will thud into the ground to be retrieved by dogs, tossed into the backs of Land Rovers, sent for landfill. That this should be happening here is a blasphemy, an affront. Do the gunmen not see?