Eliseg's Pillar

PricingFreeFree for all visitors

Free entry for everyone

Entry

Free for everyone

Pricing details

Free entry for everyone; no membership card is needed.

ParkingParking not known

The Trust's page does not say how parking is charged.

Parking details

Cadw names parking at nearby Valle Crucis Abbey, where there is space for six cars with one disabled bay close to the abbey entrance in the lane off the A542; nothing is published about charges, so the status is recorded as unknown, as on the abbey's own record. Cadw calls the walk about 200 metres, but the abbey's parking is some 400 metres from the pillar in a straight line and the walk is nearer 500 metres: north along the footway beside the A542 and then along the verge of this 60 mph road to the field gate, from which a fenced path of about 50 metres leads to the mound. There is no lay-by at the pillar and the Abbey Grange Hotel's car park next door is for its customers. Grazing animals may be in the field.

Driving pin: Cadw's marker on the pillar itself, 416 m from Valle Crucis Abbey's pin, since the roadside gate is unmapped and there is nowhere to stop on the A542. By road: 2 miles north of Llangollen on the A542, near Valle Crucis Abbey. By rail: Ruabon, 12.9 km. National Cycle Network route 85 passes 1.9 km away.

About

Eliseg's Pillar, Piler Eliseg, is the rounded lower shaft of a 9th-century cross standing on a Bronze Age burial mound in a field beside the A542, two miles north of Llangollen; the nearby abbey of Valle Crucis, the Valley of the Cross, took its name from it. Cyngen, ruler of Powys, raised the cross in the first half of the 9th century in memory of his great-grandfather Eliseg, chief opponent of Offa of Mercia, who was said to have driven the English out of this part of Wales after nine years of devastation. Its 31-line Latin inscription, tracing the dynasty back to Magnus Maximus and Vortigern, recorded by Edward Lhuyd in 1696, is unreadable today; a replica is in Llangollen Museum. Toppled in the 1640s, the shaft was re-erected in 1779 by the landowner Trevor Lloyd as a picturesque feature seen from his summer house at the abbey. It stands in railings on the fenced mound 50 metres from the road, a tranquil stop to pair with the abbey.

Open in daylightFrom Cadw's published times

Open any reasonable time in daylight

Opening times may change at short notice.

Open all year during reasonable daylight hours; no admission charge. Cadw may close monuments at short notice in extreme weather.

Terrain level 2, easy: a short fenced field path from a roadside gate to the mound, which is ringed by a fence with the pillar in railings on top; surfaces may be slippery or uneven. No facilities. Drones are not permitted.

Photo: Eliseg's Pillar in its railings on top of the grassy burial mound, with the wooded slopes of the Llantysilio hills behind. Wolfgang Sauber, CC BY-SA 3.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elisegs_Pfeiler_1_Westen_H%C3%BCgel.jpg. Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0. Resized and cropped for display; derivatives retain the source licence.