Twenty-six years ago, in the earlier years of my professional career, I was engaged in making a survey of one of the many lines of railway which at that period were spreading their network over Wales; some of them were ultimately made, others only reached the preliminary stage of the deposit of the plans and the Committee Rooms of the House of Commons. The one I was at work upon was among the slaughtered innocents; it was a line from Rhayader to Aberystwith, and passed near the village of Pont-rhyd-fendigiad in Cardiganshire, in the immediate vicinity of the ancient Abbey of Strata Florida.<br><br>I was much interested in what I then saw of the ruins remaining above ground, and formed a resolution that if ever the opportunity presented itself I would endeavour to learn what lay below the mounds of fallen stone and debris which covered the site occupied by the Abbey church, and conventual buildings.<br><br>Years passed by, and amidst the many engagements of a busy professional life I occasionally found time to pay a visit to Strata Florida for the purpose of fishing in the Teifi Lakes, and again and again renewed my determination to clear up the hidden architectural history of this buried Abbey. I laid my views on this subject before my good friend, Mr. R .W. Banks of Ridgeboume, Kington, who brought the matter under the notice of the Cambrian Archaeological Association at their meeting at Swansea in 1886, and through his influence the Society was induced to make a grant of £5, which he most liberally supplemented with a donation of a similar amount towards the expenses of a preliminary exploration of the ruins.