Battle of Stalling Down The Battle of Stalling Down is a battle reputed to have taken place in the late autumn or early winter of 1403 , between the supporters of the Welsh leader Owain Glyndŵr and those of King Henry IV of England . It was part of the Glyndŵr Rising or Welsh Revolt of 1400 - 1415 . Location . Stalling Down is a rolling area of open land a few miles east of the town of Cowbridge , now the common of the quaint village of St . Hilary in the Vale of Glamorgan . The exact site of the battle and the precise details of the action are not known . The general site is known locally as Bryn Owain , meaning Owain ' s Hill . The site was known as Stallington , evolving to Stalling Down . A Roman road runs over the hill as it traverses the area and would have been a convenient route for moving a very large army along for the English . The Opposing Forces . The Welsh army also included a French contingent assimilated into forces from Morgannwg led by Rhys Gethin ( ' swarthy Rhys ' ) and Cadwgan , Lord of Glyn Rhondda commanding the contingent from the Rhondda Valleys region . Cadwgan had a home at Aberochwy , near what is today Treorchy . He fought using a battleaxe as his weapon of choice and was later known as Cadwgan of the Bloody Axe . Owain Glyndŵr is also reported to have been present in the battle in person . Outcome . The battle is said to have lasted 18 hours and resulted in an appalling defeat for the King ' s army . The blood was fetlock deep on the horses that survived the bloody battle . The English army retreated through Cardiff pursued by the Welsh , in a thunderstorm and terrible conditions including flooding . A Grisly Find . In nearby Llanblethian church in 1896 explorations prior to Victorian church improvements revealed an oak plank in the floor , which when prised up , revealed a stone stairway descending to a crypt . Inside the crypt were piled three hundred male skeletons , without coffins . The crypt measured some seventeen feet by fifteen and stood seven feet high at its highest point , the apex of the arched and vaulted roof . Small wall openings to the exterior had been covered up on the outside by earth , effectively sealing the crypt to the outside world . The bones were immediately buried in the churchyard . The clerk ' s pew contains an inscription that this church was the burial place of the Sweeting family ' before the war with Owen Glyndŵr ' . The church is some three miles from the battle ground . Re - examination of historical sources . More recently , historians have begun to question the veracity of the report of a battle at Stalling Down ; for example , the foremost modern authority on Glyndŵr , the late R . R . Davies , made no mention of it in his meticulous account of the revolt , published in 1995 . The problem lies in the fact that the earliest recorded reference to the battle is late , and is found in the works of the 18th - century writer Iolo Morgannwg . Morgannwg was well known for taking liberties with Welsh history , and the ' ancient ' manuscript on which he is supposed to have based his account of Stalling Down has never been traced . Morgannwg ' s account held considerable sway for some years , and was repeated by several later writers , including the Edwardian historian Arthur Bradley in his 1901 biography of Owain Glyndŵr . In it , he places the battle in 1405 , calling it the ' battle of Bryn Owen ' . Such uncritical recountings of Morgannwg ' s version of events have had a considerable effect on popular perceptions of Glyndŵr ' s revolt in the Glamorgan area . Nevertheless , in spite of this uncertainty it is not safe to conclude that Stalling Down never occurred . There is much local tradition to be found in connection with it ( see above ) , and the context of a battle in either the summer of 1403 or 1405 accords well with our understanding of the progress of Glyndŵr ' s revolt . Glyndŵr ' s presence at nearby Carmarthen in the summer of 1403 is well attested , and it may be that an incursion into nearby Glamorgan produced a confrontation of which the battle of Stalling Down , as remembered today , is a manifestation .