A CHEPSTOW gardener is heading off to live in a Tudor Court.

Dr Glyn Jones, who won the Best Back Garden Category in the Chepstow in Bloom 2014 competition, is dipping his green fingers into a very different challenge on S4C.

Glyn has stepped back almost 500 years to appear in the S4C television living history series Y Llys which starts on the channel on Saturday 1st November.

Glyn, originally from Denbigh, is in the Tudor court in Tretower, Brecon Beacons with 16 other people for nearly three weeks, recreating life in a court in 1525.

In Y Llys we will see him play the role of the gatekeeper.

From his back garden Glyn can see Chepstow Castle, a fortification which the Normans started building in 1067, and he was inspired to apply for the reality history programme, partly because of his love for this ancient monument.

He said: "I live in the shadows of one of the oldest castles in Wales, and I love anything to do with history. I want to find out what life was like in Tudor times and how history had developed since Norman times."

Glyn had followed S4C's living history series Y Plas last year, a hit show which recreated life in a rural mansion in the 1920s. He had even provided horses for the series as he runs a horse-drawn carriages company in Chepstow.

Since moving to Chepstow from Aberystwyth four years ago after meeting his fiancée Jan, Glyn, 63, has immersed himself in the town's activities.

Not only has he won the best back garden in Chepstow, but he's also a member of Chepstow Castle Singers. He now works as a farming advisor and he hopes to put his background to good practice as gatekeeper in Y Llys, a series produced for S4C by Boom Pictures Cymru.

"I believe that I've got good leadership qualities. In my every day work I have to be a bit of a preacher! I'm quite bossy!" he says.

What he dreaded when he got the role in the Tudor remake series were the living conditions. Back in 1525, when Henry VIII ruled England and Wales, there would have been no electricity, central heating, clean water and certainly no social media (something that Glyn is quite fond of using!).

"There won't be any clean water, and when we had our training day they showed us how to clean our hands! The soap they used smelt, it was carbolic!"

Viewers will have to watch the series to find out how he got on without his partner, children, grandchildren, mobile phone, Facebook and potatoes! 

But he adds, "I've walked on the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal quite a bit, so I'm familiar with the area. I've driven past Tretower Court several times, but I've never been there before, so I am looking forward to living there!"

Y Llys starts on Saturday, 1st November with English subtitles available.