Mordiford lies by the River Lugg at the foot of a beautiful wood, and was once an important mining village. A rather lovely 9 span bridge over the river was once a useful source of silver spurs for the king………apparently every time a king crossed the bridge the local lords of the manors had to give him a pair!!

Mordiford had it’s very own dragon, although the legend has varied over the years as did the painting of it in the church. Sometimes it was shown as green with two wings, and sometimes red with four wings or variations on the theme. The first part of the story has always remained much the same, in that a little girl in the village, called Maud, discovered a baby dragon and took it home to care for it. Her parents were naturally not best pleased, and told her to get rid of the creature but she didn’t, and secretly fed it milk. After a bit of course, as is the way with dragons, it needed more than milk and started raiding the local livestock and then people. It eventually left Maud and made a home in the woods but it never forgot her kindness and was good enough not to eat her. From here on the story varies widely; one version was that a member of a local family, the Garstons (whose family crest includes a Wyvern – a sort of dragon) killed the dragon. Another version maintains that a prisoner facing execution was given the chance of freedom if he slew the dragon…….he managed to do this, but died anyway because the dragon breathed fire on him. The final version of the dragon’s demise involved the flooding of the River Lugg which caused the death of some cows…….the dragon gorged itself on these carcasses and fell fast asleep, whereupon the villages all clubbed it to death.