Llandeilo Graban Dragon

St Teilo's Church in the small Powys village of Llandeilo Graban, near Painscastle and Builth Wells, is the setting for one of the most distinctive dragon legends of the Welsh borders. Tradition holds that a dragon took up residence in the church's belfry or tower, terrorising the surrounding parish whenever it left its lair to hunt.

Unable to fight the creature directly, a local blacksmith devised a cunning trap: he forged a decoy dragon from iron and placed it in the nest while the real dragon was away. When the dragon returned and found the impostor, it attacked the iron figure in a rage, triggering a hidden mechanism that drove a set of sharp spikes into the beast and killed it on the spot.

The tale is often cited in surveys of British dragon-lore as one of the last dragons traditionally said to have been killed in Wales, fitting a pattern of 'dragon in the church tower' stories found at a handful of border churches. Llandeilo Graban's version is unusual for the ingenuity of the blacksmith's solution, and the 14th-century church itself still stands as the legend's setting.