GHF-E106-R33-A1 — Letter, Cogan Pill, 22 November 1931: spearhead, spur and skeletons found at Llandough Church Farm c. 1858 (Museum Wales file 63.24)
Wiki catalogue reference: GHF-E106-R33-A1 · Custodian / source URL: Buckler family evidence repository
Evidence preview
1. The evidence
Supplied by Amgueddfa Cymru as a scanned PDF and published here unaltered. Archive copy (SHA-256 34a54e6f…c47d).
Catalogue UID: GHF-E106-R33-A1 · Custodian/source copy: open source object. Preview and provenance status as at 10-10-2026.
Description
Catalogue: GHF-E106-R33-A1 · Type: Letter (handwritten, scanned) · Date of document: 22 November 1931 · Holder: Amgueddfa Cymru – Museum Wales, accession file 63.24 · Received: 5 October 2026, attached to the Museum’s reply to FOI 2026-036 (GHF-E106-R33) · Original filename: 63-24 letter.pdf
This page follows the wiki’s evidence standard: 1. the evidence, 2. a verbatim transcript, 3. a description and 4. an interpretation. Sections 1–3 can be checked by anyone against the PDF. Section 4 is open to challenge under the change-control rule.
DESCRIPTION A single handwritten page headed Cogan Pill and dated 22 November 1931. It was evidently written to go with a spearhead (and mentions a spur) and gives their findspot and the circumstances of discovery. A later hand has annotated it “File 63.24”, the Museum’s accession file for the two objects it describes. The scan was made on a Canon office copier on 7 August 2026, which suggests it was copied for the Museum’s earlier FOI work (FOI 2026-024).
Transcription
Open transcription
Line breaks are not kept. Original spelling is kept. Square brackets mark editorial notes.
[Top left, in a different hand, ringed, with an arrow:] File 63.24
Cogan Pill
Nov 22nd 1931.This spear head was found a[t] Llandough Church Farm when digging foundations for some new buildings about 1858. The spur was also found. About 6 skeletons of big men were also found in same place, all buried with a lot of shells, limpet or cockel. These were reburied in a large hole near the style on South Side of Church. Uncle Eddie remembers going up to see these, when a small boy
Reading notes: “style” is the writer’s spelling of “stile”. The page ends without a full stop or signature; whether a second page exists is not known.
Interpretation and wider context
INTERPRETATION This appears to be the source of the Museum’s “Church Farm, 1858” provenance. The Museum has told the family that the medieval ironwork in its collection came from Church Farm, Llandough, in 1858. The object records (A2, A3) repeat this letter’s details and wording, and no other provenance document has been supplied.
How strong the provenance is. The letter was written some 73 years after the find, by someone who does not say they saw it; the only witness it names is “Uncle Eddie”, who saw the skeletons as a small boy. It is a family account passed down, written in 1931, not a contemporary record of 1858. It is the earliest written provenance the Museum holds for these objects, but it is not independent proof of where they were found.
What it does and does not say about Great House Farm. The letter itself says “Llandough Church Farm”, not “Great House Farm” or “Tŷ Mawr”. The Wiki therefore does not treat “Church Farm” as an established alias of Great House Farm. Its findspot may ultimately prove to be Great House Farm, but that must be established from an independent period source; the fact that Great House Farm is beside St Dochdwy’s Church is not sufficient by itself.
Llandough Farm is a separate farmstead. In the same Llandough near Penarth/Cardiff locality, the Museum separately records “Llandough Farm (opposite hospital)”. This is a different property from Great House Farm / Tŷ Mawr. Neither “Llandough Farm” nor “Llandough Church Farm” should be treated as a nomenclature variant of Great House Farm unless a source expressly proves the connection.
The skeletons. About six burials found near the church and reburied by a stile on the south side of the churchyard fit the known burial landscape around St Dochdwy’s, including the early-medieval cemetery excavated north of the church in 1994. The letter says they were found “in same place” as the objects, not buried with them; the spur and spearhead are dated by the Museum to the later medieval period (14th–15th century), centuries after the early-medieval cemetery. No connection between the objects and the burials should be assumed.
Research leads: the writer’s identity and “Uncle Eddie”; whether the letter has a second page; the third object in accession 1963.24 (the records say three objects, but only two records were supplied); the documentary history of the Church Farm name; the 1858 buildings and their precise footprint (tithe map, estate surveys); and any record of a reburial by the south stile of the churchyard. See the Anomalies Register. 🕒
- GHF-E106-R33 — Amgueddfa Cymru reply (FOI 2026-036)
- Archaeology and Heritage — the reported “armour” discovery
- GHF-E106-R33-A2 — record 63.24/1, rowel spur · GHF-E106-R33-A3 — record 63.24/2, spearhead
Interpretive assessment date: 10-10-2026.