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St Ciwg’s Church at Llangiwg is a remote and picturesque medieval church located 700 feet above sea level above on Barley Hill the town of Pontardawe. The church, named after Ciwg ab Arawn (also known as Ciwg the Confessor), a 6th century saint who introduced Christianity into the area between AD 542 and 568, was a focus for pilgrimage in the late-medieval period. The church at the site today was substantially rebuilt in 1812, but there are remains of the Norman church on the site, including the tower. This Grade II listed building was declared redundant in 2004 and is now in the care of The Llangiwg Trust.

In the area also is a rocky outcrop, above Coed Alltacham and just below the Pontardawe Golf course’s 16th hole, which offers an amazing viewpoint of the Swansea Valley. For some, this outcrop is called Elephant Rock, but for others, the rock that deserves that name is another one nearby which bears a carved image of an elephant. This rock is located above Dan y Bryn Residential Care Home, which incidentally was the former Pontardawe Workhouse. There is also a carving of an unknown, but thought to be local, church on an adjacent rock.

In 2021, renowned local historian, Clive Reed, provided the following statement on the carving of the elephant for the Swansea Valley History Society:

“Tom Williams of Pontardawe, one of the founders of the Swansea Valley History Society c1976, told me in the early 1980s that a circus had visited Pontardawe just after the First World War and it had an elephant in one of their acts, and a quarryman who had seen the elephant carved the image of the unusual animal he had seen. I photographed the rock in 1986 when the elephant was much better outlined and with other features also visible. When I visited the rock again in 2012 much of the rock had weathered and some of the features had disappeared. The rock is only 78 inches long and 33 inches high at its tallest point with the elephant in the right-hand bottom corner. The elephant in question is only 12 inches long and 11 inches high. In the 1980s an image of a man was visible in front of the elephant. He was only about six inches high. That would have been the elephant trainer or mahout. The date 1925 was visible above the elephant in 1986…”