Llanigon    

Some forty years ago my father bought a tumbled down cottage in the parish of Llanigon tucked away in one of the valleys running up to the north facing slopes of the Black Mountains, and it was at this home from home, high on the hillside above the village, that I found inspiration for my first novel Lady of Hay, for On the Edge of Darkness and for Child of the Phoenix and now for The Warrior's Princess and it is there that I write large portions of all my books. The parish church, dedicated to the mysterious St Eigon, is delightful, nestling in the centre of the small village and the churchyard is reckoned to be an ancient, site; it is D shaped and was maybe once almost circular. Interestingly, the church is orientated towards the north-east which may point to the early medieval tradition of building a church to face sunrise on the day of its patron saint. Not much of the medieval church is left and nothing, apparently, of any much earlier building.