There has been for a long time a widely-felt regret that no general history existed of Margam Abbey, one of the most representative houses of the great Order of Cistercians, whose influence for good over the minds of mediæval men of this realm has been so frequently attested.

Preface.

To write the history of the renowned Cistercian Abbey of Margam, which exercised a powerful influence over the progress of civilization in the county of Glamorgan, could never have been attempted, had it not been that probably the whole of the documents relating to it are now available to research.

Chapter I. Some of the earliest monasteries of Glamorgan.

During 1997, Margam Abbey celebrates the 850th anniversary of its foundation in 1147, and to commemorate the occasion, the West Glamorgan Archive Service, which is a joint archive service serving the County Borough of Neath Port Talbot and the City and County of Swansea, has published this limited facsimile edition of the well-known work by Walter de Gray Birch, the History of Margam Abbey, which was first published exactly one hundred years ago in 1897.

Introduction to the facsimile edition, by Susan Beckley.

New readers, coming to Birch's History of Margam Abbey for the first time, may be surprised to find that it is not a sustained narrative history.

Margam, by David Walker.

Britain produced may distinguished and talented historians in the nineteenth century, none more so that Dr Walter de Gray Birch (1874-1924), whose published works and professional dedication over a period of some sixty years must surely earn him a well-deserved niche in the annals of British history.

Walter de Gray Birch, a biographical note, by John Vivian Hughes.