ABBEY-CWM-HIR, a parish, comprising the hamlet of Cevnpawl, in the hundred of KEVENLLEECE, and the hamlet of Gollon, in the hundred of KNIGHTON, county of RADNOR, SOUTH WALES, 6 miles (N. E.) from. Rhaiadr, containing 481 inhabitants. This place derives its name, which signifies "the abbey in the long dingle," from the erection of an ancient Cistercian monastery in this sequestered spot. The two hamlets of which the parish now consists, and which unitedly maintain their poor, constituted, till within a very recent period, the upper division of the parish of Llanbister, to which the church of Cwm Hir was a chapel of ease. The living is a perpetual curacy, in the archdeaconry of Brecknock, and diocese of St. David's, endowed with £800 royal bounty, and in the patronage of Thomas Wilson, Esq. The church, dedicated to St. Mary, is a plain edifice of moderate dimensions, with a small belfry at the west end, under which a gallery was erected in 1830, at the expense of Mr.Wilson, who also presented an organ; in the chancel are two mural tablets to the memory of Sir Hans Fowler and another member of the same family. A tenement called the Vron, in the parish of Llanbister, is charged with the annual payment of ten shillings to the poor of this parish. The ancient abbey, which was dedicated to St. Mary, was founded in 1143, by Cadwallon ab Madoc, and was originally designed for sixty brethren of the Cistercian order, but never completed upon so extensive a scale. It occupied a secluded situation in a romantic valley, deeply embosomed among lofty hills and abrupt precipices, once covered with forests of oak, but now almost denuded, affording only pasturage for mountain sheep, and exhibiting some stunted trees, the roots of which have penetrated between the interstices of the slate rock which composes the substratum of these hills. In the year 1231, a friar of this house having occasioned the defeat of the garrison of Montgomery, by Llewelyn ab Iorwerth, Prince of North Wales, by conveying to it false intelligence of the position of the latter, King Henry II., on approaching with the English army, set fire to the grange of the monastery, in revenge for the friar's treachery, and was proceeding to burn the abbey itself, which was only saved from destruction by the payment of three hundred marks by the abbot. It suffered considerable injury, in 1401, from the furious resentment of Owain Glyndwr; and the society, at the dissolution, consisted only of three monks, the revenue being estimated at £28. 17. 4. In the 37th of Henry VIII., the site was granted to Walter Henley and John Williams, and afterwards passed into the family of the Fowlers: the estate is now the property, by purchase, of Thomas Wilson, Esq., who is building, with materials brought from the ruins of the abbey, a small but elegant house upon it, in the Elizabethan style of architecture. The venerable ruins, which have recently been rendered more interesting and conspicuous, by clearing the ground, consist principally of portions of the four walls of a spacious building, two hundred and thirty-eight feet in length, and sixty-four in breadth, which was probably the church, varying in height from four to twelve feet above the ground. The pedestals, with part of the shafts, of a beautiful range of twelve clustered columns, of peculiar elegance, still decorate the walls; and within the area there was probably a double range of massive pillars, separating the nave from the aisles, of which the bases of three are remaining, from which it appears that they were square, with flutings for a cluster of three columns at each angle of the pillar, with a single lateral shaft intervening: at the east end are the remains of two doorways, with triple clustered columns at the angles of each, and between them a series of four columns; and on the north-east side of this extensive building are appearances of a similar arrangement. The ground about this interesting ruin is filled with fragments of richly carved freestone, of which the ornamental parts of the building were constructed, and in many of these the details are as perfect as when first sculptured: a gravestone was lately found among the ruins, bearing an ancient inscription in rude characters. The average annual expenditure for the support of the poor of this parish amounts to £233. 18.