Open from 10:00 daily Last entry 3 pm
Wye Valley MINIATURE GOLF
Now with two great 12-hole courses:
NEW Indoor ADVENTURE GOLF
Play on our unique course inspired by local legends surrounding King Arthur. Our course lies in the very shadow of the hill where Uther Pendragon first met Vortigern’s wizard Merlin.
You’ll be playing indoors from the Sword in the Stone to the Kings Thorne and the Quest for the Grail. Keep your eyes peeled and you might spot the red and the white dragons, the crown of Arthur and Robin Redbreast.
Find out about our local legends
Outdoor MINIATURE GOLF
A roman ruin fantasy set in spectacular scenery in the Wye Valley, inspired by roman remains found further up White Brook and on the other side of the River Wye.
An outstanding outdoor course with all-weather artificial-turf fairways. The design unites a picturesque roman ruin theme, retro minigolf style and adventure golf features for ultimate playability for all ages.
Everyone loves the challenge of minigolf, and this course is a real leveller so you never know who’ll win. Where else can children beat their parents with a club in a fair contest?
Soft or short putters are available, so that even a toddler can play.
Local legends which inspired us
The Sword in the Stone
1,500 years ago on our nearest hill, Ambrosius Aurelianus and Uthr Pendragon defeated Gwrtheyrn (Vortigern the Thin in English) and caught his prophet Myrddin, King Gwrtheyrn’s wizard in the fort which gives the hill its name (The Doward (from Llandougarth, “enclosure of two enclosures”). Vortigern was buried at Ganarew. Myrddyn (Merlin in English) later used magic to disguise Uthr as his enemy Gorlois so as to win the love of that duke’s wife. Eigr (Igerna or Igraine) welcomed Uthr very gladly, and so Arthur was born at Tintagel. Merlin arranged fo the boy to be fostered, then twelve years later got him accepted as Uthr’s heir when the Arthur took out a sword embedded through an anvil into stone - symbolic of converting iron ore into arms. Merlin arranged a special coronation at Caerleon, and afterward the guests went outside to play a game hitting balls with sticks - golf?
King Arthur’s Hall
On The Doward, this cave is close to Gwrtheyrn’s Fort. The tale about the cave is not that Arthur sleeps there as the future king. This cave had a secret passage to Merlin’s Cave at New Weir and Arthur’s treasure was kept in it. We might expect the usual tale about the passage disappearing if anyone touches the treasure, and it being guarded by a dragon - but that was unsaid. However, the hill somehow needed its own Prince - Bedwini - who was appointed by Arthur to be Bishop to his Court at Gelliwig near Caerwent. So what treasure would merit a prince to guard it - or maybe a dragon?
Iron ore, limestone and wood: There were at least three iron mines inside the fort. Merlin’s Cave was also mined at New Weir, and the ironworks below it became the biggest in Britain before the Industrial Revolution, supplying forges in Goodrich, Ross-on-Wye, Tintern and beyond through nineteen locks on the River Wye, Limestone and charcoal from the hill were used in smelting. And maybe, once upon a time, a dragon symbolised the fire of the forge.
The Assembly of Giants
Ambrosius sent Uthr to punish the Irish for invading Britain. He took their stone circle, called Cor Gaure - meaning “Assembly of Giants” - from “Killaraus in Ireland”. We call that circle Stonehenge in English because the trilithons look like the gibbets once used for hangings. Merlin moved Cor Gaure to Salisbury Plain, and rebuilt it as a monument to the four hundred and sixty noble Britons who’d been killed by the Saxon Hengist’s treachery on “The Night of the Long Knives”. In time, Ambrosius, Uther and his other brother Constance were buried in the circle with the victims of the massacre. In reality, the original bluestones were actually quarried at Craig Rhos-y-felin and Carn Goedeg in Preseli, west Wales - not in Ireland, but in an area occupied by Irish in the time of Ambrosius. The circle was initially erected at Waun Mawn in Preseli about 5,000 years ago, then moved by land six hundred years later to Salisbury Plain roughly along the route of the A40. Geoffrey of Monmouth recorded the folk-memory, 3,500 years after the stones were transported through his own birthplace.
Merlin’s Cave
A French story told that Merlin fell in lust with the Lady of the Lake, Vivianne. She agreed to go with Merlin - if he taught her all the magic that he had inherited from his father, a demon. She being an elf and he the son of a demon, they’d live underground. Well, she put him right off her by magic words tattooed on her [bowdlerism - just say “ring”], a very ancient folklore motif. He went mad - so she chained him up but kept nagging him for a spell which would put someone to sleep for ever. Being a prophet, he knew who’d be the victim, so he taught her other magic (A wizard boring his wife to sleep is another ancient motif). So… he who helped Uther break his vows - and she who would help Guinevere break hers - were locked in a purgatorial relationship by their own broken tryst. BUT what of that secret passage to King Arthur’s Hall (another ancient theme)? Merlin must have escaped, because he’s buried at Mynydd Ferthin near Longtown; Vivianne escaped because she went on to foster Lancelot. They had met at the Siege Dolorous (“Seat of Sadness”), which was said to have been at Ewyas Harold, just five miles from Mynydd Ferthin as the crow flies.
Harmony of the Britons
Arthur is not a historic person, but if kings were known by titles rather than names in what is now South Wales, the Forest of Dean and Herefordshire, we might know who inspired the folk tales: The historic kingdoms of the Silures tribe were united with the Cornovi tribe through conquest and marriage. Their kings had a tradition of electing an Ameraudur (Commander in Chief). Gwrtheyrn was Cornovian. He usurped power across southern Britain after the Romans left, so he lost the support needed to fight invasions from Irish, Picts, Angles and Saxons. He recruited Jutes as mercenaries in return for the land of Kent. He didn’t pay them, so they brought an invasion force. It all led to civil war. King Tewdrig (Theodoric) of Glwysing and Gwent was Silurean. He subjugated the Irish in Dyfed, beat the Saxons back, and won the civil war, then retired to monastic life at Tintern for thirty years. Called again to war, he beat a Saxon army at Pont y Saeson but died during evacuation to Flat Holm. He was buried near Caerwent at Mathern, and made a saint. His son Meurig had married Onbrawst, the great granddaughter of king Peibiau of Ergyng, so Meurig ruled a Cornovian kingdom too (now South Herefordshire and the Forest of Dean, with a capital at Ariconium, now Weston-under-Penyard). Tewdrig had appointed Meurig to be king of Dyfed. Meurig was also Stater (aide-de-camp) to his own son Athrwys, who was Ameraudur. Meurig got so sick that he had to be carted into battle and was known as “the half-dead king”. Athrwys inherited more kingdoms from Tewdrig and Meurig, and probably the part of Pengwern ruled from Caer Magnis (Kenchester) near Hereford. His youngest son, “Black” Morgan Mwynfawr (the Benefactor) was educated by Gwalchmai (Sir Gawain) and became heir to Athrwys. Morgan renamed his kingdom “Morgannwg”. The dynasty ruled there until the time of King Athelstan II.
The Rant of Gildas the Wise
Gildas was a monk who’d trained under St. Illtyd and lived on Flat Holm. He wrote a famous sermon, ranting about the kings of the Britons, blaming them for the ruin and conquest of Britain. It is the only surviving history from the time - 567 AD. He didn’t name Arthur, but raged about Gwtheyrn (Vortigern) and Constantine (usually identified as Cystennin Gorneu) in the excerpt pinned to the wall here. The meaning of “Gorneu” is unclear: Usually understood as Cornwall, it could just as well have meant Genoreu (modern Ganarew, about a mile from here), or it may have meant Kernyw, the name of the people of the Cornovi tribe. Gildas eventually left for Glastonbury and then Brittany, along with many refugees. They took the tales of Arthur with them. Their Breton stories of Arthur were brought back to Britain by the Normans five hundred years later, adding to Welsh folk-tales.
Constantine the Tyrannical Whelp
King Arthur defeated Medraud (Mordred) at Camlann (in north west Wales). Arthur entrusted his crown to Constantine - but disguising himself as an Abbot, Constantine assassinated one son of Medraud at prayer in a church in London, and the other in a monastery at Winchester. Shamed by Gildas, the disgraced Constantine abdicated to become a monk. He founded the old church (Hen Llan) at Hentland in Mainaur Garth Benni (Goodrich, two miles away from here) on land given to the church by Peibiau. He also built the crossing over the Wye to Walford - called Constantine’s Ford - which was used for 1,300 years. In the local tale, allies of Mordred murdered Constantine after three years. He was buried at Stonehenge and made a saint for defending Christianity.
Arthur’s Stone
The young Arthur had fought a giant on Merbach Hill near Dorstone, during which the capstone was cracked. The battle used to be celebrated annualy by a fair there. The giant may have been Rein, whose fort - Caer Rein - was on Aconbury Hill overlooking Hereford. Rein (or Retho, maybe Rein Dremrudd of Brycheiniog) had challenged Arthur after the upstart youth had humiliated King Peibiau of Erging and his brother King Nyniaw of Gwent. Arthur yoked them to plough like oxen for going to war over the sheep grazing on the Black Mountains. Arthur took the vanquished Rein’s mantle – made from the beard-pelts of the giant’s defeated enemies - as a trophy to wear at his coronation at Caerleon, where he was crowned by Dyffrig, grandson of Peibiau and now Patron Saint of this parish (St. Dubricius in Latin). Dyffrig abruptly resigned his post and wisely became a hermit on Bardsey, the isle of bards.
The Kings Thorne
The royal Stuart dynasty claimed descent from Arthur, like the Tudors before them. Charles I styled himself “Arthur Redivivat” in support of his claim to rule by divine right, and even used Arthur’s Stone as a dining table in 1645. A sprig of The Holy Thorn was sent to Charles by the monks of Glastonbury every Christmas. One, “the Kings Thorne”, was planted near The Castle Inn at Little Birch on Aconbury Hill where royalists lived and which Roundheads had occupied. The King’s Thorne flowered at midnight on Twelfth Night (“Old Christmas”) for an hour and again at Easter. The tree survived for three and a half centuries after The Regicide of “Charles the Martyr”. The Holy Thorn - from which the King’s Thorne scion had come - had sprung miraculously from the staff of Saint Joseph of Arimathea, a tin trader who’d known Jesus, brought His relics to Britain, built the first church in the world at Glastonbury, and converted a British king, Arviragus. British Christianity thus had seniority over Roman Catholicism, which is why the monarch is Fidei Defendor, “Defender of the Faith”. Constantine the Great - a Briton who was declared Roman Emperor in York - had eventually legalised Christianity in 313 AD. This legend explains William Blake’s lyrics of the hymn “Jerusalem”. The “Blowing of the King’s Thorne” - its flowering - was celebrated by Royalists in Little Birch after monarchy was restored when government by The Commonwealth failed.
The Quest for the Holy Grail
West Midlands Constabulary went on a fruitless quest for The Holy Grail in 2014 after it was stolen from Weston-under-Penyard near Ross-on-Wye. A woman there had been using Cwpan Nanteos for a cure. It was a mazer bowl , or “loving cup”saved from Strata Florida by its monks when Henry VIII had dissolved the abbey. Treasured for 400 years by the Jones and Powell families of Nanteos, some believe it to be the Holy Grail, the cup used by Jesus at The Last Supper which had been sent to Britain by Joseph of Arimathea after he’d arranged the funeral of Jesus. The Dingestow Brut manuscript tells that Eigr, Arthur’s mother, had been a descendant of Joseph’s sister, and her grandfather had once been Custodian of The Grail, which explains King Arthur’s obsession with finding the lost relic. Cwpan Nanteos was handed in anonymously after eleven months and is now curated by the National Library of Wales at Aberystwyth.
“It is all true, or it ought to be; and more and better besides. And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny, and massacre for freedom, law and honour, let them remember that the fame of their deeds, even though they themselves be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as long as the world rolls round. Let us then declare that King Arthur… slaughtered innumerable hosts of foul barbarians and set decent folk an example for all time”. - Winston Churchill
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