I remember a conversation a few years ago where someone commented how a recently deceased gentleman was always in the church in Llanishen. When someone else in the group expressed surprise at this revelation, the others roared out laughing. They had meant the Church Inn, not the venerable building opposite from which it took its name.

Old photos of Llanishen show church and pub together down through the decades, now surrounded by shops and houses of course. But keep your eyes open on your summer travels and you will see the same situation, church and pub together, repeated countless times across our countryside. An extraordinary example of just the two, with no other building for miles, is at Llanwonno, on the hills above Pontypridd and the Rhondda, where some of my ancestors are buried. I suspect they frequented both the buildings!

On the signs of old inns is one of the places where we can sometimes discover hidden history right in front of us, and in many cases it is old pre-Reformation Catholic history. Take, for example, one of the best-known hotels in Cardiff, the Angel. The current building is on a very old site going back many centuries. One of the oldest pub signs was the Salutation, the name for the Annunciation in the Middle Ages. In many places this “angel” would have been Gabriel, surviving from the original Salutation scene. The Reformers removed Our Lady as being too Papist, but left the more acceptable Angel. Keep an eye open on your travels for those old inn signs, and see if you can spot any others with Catholic roots, such as the Lamb and Flag – the Risen Jesus with his banner.

Fr Matthew