Tintern Abbey, on the banks of the River Wye, once the richest abbey in Wales
THERE ARE FEW more attractive towns in Britain than MONMOUTH, sited on a hilly peninsula between the Monmow and Wye rivers. Still faithful to its 15th-century layout, the town is full of Georgian shop-fronts, colourful markets and medieval coaching inns.
The best way to enter the town is from the west, across the mighty 13th-century MONMOW BRIDGE, with its great towering gatehouse, the only surviving fortified bridge in Britain. Next to the bridge is a small church dedicated to St Thomas Becket, built in 1180 and possessing a wide, Norman chancel arch.
Monmouth’s main street, Monmow Street, starts broad here, where the cattle markets were held, and then funnels up the hill to the site of the original Norman castle of 1068. St Mary’s Church marks the site of the Priory where, around 1135, the Prior, Geoffrey of Monmouth (1090–1155), wrote his epic History of the Kings of Britain, which traces back the line of British kings and introduced the world to King Lear, King Arthur and the wizard Merlin.
Monmouth Castle was rebuilt in 1375 by John of Gaunt, and in 1387 his grandson, the future HENRY V, was born there. There is not much left of the castle now, but a little way down the hill is Agincourt Square, named after Henry V’s great triumph over the French in 1415. Victory at Agincourt, against a much greater French force, was secured by the brilliance of Henry’s Welsh archers and their longbows. Shakespeare tells us they wore leeks in their ‘Monmouth caps’. These round hats, knitted from brown wool and with a button on top, were produced only in Monmouth and were very popular in Tudor times. There is only one example left in existence, and that can be seen in the Nelson Museum in Monmouth.
Henry V stands on a pedestal high up on the impressive facade of the 18th-century Shire Hall, overlooking Agincourt Square and a statue of another of Monmouth’s famous sons, CHARLES STEWART ROLLS, younger son of Lord and Lady Llangattock and co-founder of Rolls-Royce, whose family home, The Hendre, lies just outside the town.
Lady Llangattock was fascinated with Lord Nelson and collected everything connected with him that she could find. The telescope he raised to his blind eye at Copenhagen, his chair from HMS Victory, Emma Hamilton’s harp and the Romney miniature of her that Nelson kept in his cabin, his sword, books, a Bible: hers is the most comprehensive collection of Nelson memorabilia outside the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. She gave it all to Monmouth, where it is housed in the Nelson Museum in Glendower Street.
With its tales of gallantry, courage and magic, Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain is considered to be the most influential and important contribution to European literature and culture of its time. Although later added to and embellished by others, the vision that Monmouth drew of Arthur and his struggles has survived almost untouched to the present day, through Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur of 1470, to Lord Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and even Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s own source is thought to have been a 9th-century Welsh monk from Bangor called Nennius, who mentions a great warrior leader named ‘Artorius’ in his Historia Britonum. It places Arthur and his court firmly in Wales, with Arthur’s fortress, which later became known as Camelot, located at Caerleon. William Shakespeare drew his King Lear from Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, in which he appears as Leir.
Nelson did once visit Monmouth in 1802, on his way back from visiting Sir William Hamilton’s docks at Milford Haven. He stayed the night at the Beaufort Arms, and next morning went up Kymin Hill to look at the view over the Wye valley and see the Naval Temple, erected two years earlier in tribute to him and other famous British admirals. It is a captivating spot.
BLAENAVON IS AN astonishing place. Here on the edge of mountain and moorland, at the head of the River Llwyd, sits possibly THE MOST COMPLETE AND IMPORTANT INDUSTRIAL HERITAGE SITE IN THE WORLD.
It all began in 1782, with three industrialists, Thomas Hopkins, Benjamin Pratt and Thomas Hill, who leased some land near Blaenavon from the 1st Earl of Abergavenny, and dug a coal-pit. A few years later, they were ready to create THE FIRST PURPOSE-BUILT MULTI-FURNACE IRONWORKS IN WALES, hard up against a cliff face, with three furnaces powered by a steam engine, and utilising all the latest cutting-edge technology. It quickly grew into one of the largest ironworks in the world, rivalled only by the huge ironworks at nearby Merthyr Tydfil (see Glamorgan). The structures of the ironworks at Blaenavon survive almost intact, forming THE BEST-PRESERVED 18TH-CENTURY IRONWORKS IN THE WORLD.
The BIG PIT MINE at Blaenavon was worked for over 100 years, longer than almost any other colliery in Wales. It was first dug in 1880, on the site of an earlier mine sunk in 1860, and it closed in 1980. It has reopened as a museum and is THE ONLY COAL-MINE IN WALES WHERE THE PUBLIC CAN GO UNDERGROUND IN THE ORIGINAL PIT CAGE.
As the ironworks got busier, new transport links were needed, and in 1812, Thomas Hill began to construct a primitive railway across the hills to connect with the Brecon and Abergavenny Canal. There is a footpath the runs along the route of Hill’s Tramroad, as it became known, and it makes for an exhilarating walk, along the level terraces that Hill had cut into the mountainside, and on down past the counter-balanced inclines to Llanfoist, outside Abergavenny. A branch line leading to the quarry at Pwll-Du tunnels under the mountain for 1½ miles (2.4 km), through THE LONGEST TUNNEL EVER BUILT IN BRITAIN FOR A HORSE-DRAWN RAILWAY.
In 1878, two young men working as chemists at Blaenavon, metallurgy student SIDNEY GILCHRIST THOMAS and his cousin PERCY CARLYLE GILCHRIST, made a breakthrough that would have far-reaching effects for the future of mankind around the world, and for Blaenavon.
Twenty years earlier Henry Bessemer had invented a converter for making steel in large quantities, but only from ores with a low phosphorus content, such as those found at Blaenavon, which were relatively rare. Sidney Gilchrist Thomas and his cousin devised a lining for the Bessemer converters which absorbed the excess phosphorus, allowing common, high-phosphorus ores to be used, and within four years the process had been sold to the Russians, to European countries, such as Austria, Hungary and Luxembourg, and to the USA. Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-born Steel King of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, paid $250,000 for the rights to use the process in America and commented, ‘These two young men, Thomas and Gilchrist of Blaenavon, did more for Britain’s greatness than all the Kings and Queens put together.’
Six years after his momentous achievement, Sidney Thomas Gilchrist died at the young age of 35, his lungs destroyed by the dust and chemicals produced by his experiments. A granite memorial and bust of him can be seen near to the restored Blaenavon Ironworks.
Ironically, the discovery at Blaenavon had an adverse effect on the town itself. The fact that steel could now be made from high-phosphorus ore, which could be found anywhere, meant that other countries were able set up their own steelworks, and this caused a drop in demand for steel from Blaenavon, which gradually began to decline.
Blaenavon is now a World Heritage Site.
PONTYPOOL IS THE site of WALES’S FIRST RECORDED IRON FORGE, known to have been operating in around 1425. At the end of the 16th century an early ironworks was established in Pontypool, and in 1652 emigrants from here by the name of Leonard are said to have set up THE FIRST IRON-MAKING FORGE IN AMERICA, on the Saugus River, north of Boston, Massachusetts.
At the end of the 17th century, PONTYPOOL became THE FIRST TOWN IN BRITAIN TO MANUFACTURE TIN PLATE on a large scale, when ironmaster JOHN HANBURY developed a heated rolling process that produced a high-quality tin plate smooth and thin enough to be made into kitchenware.
At the start of the 18th century one of his managers, THOMAS ALLGOOD, developed a material that, when baked on to the tin plate, created a protective layer of hard lacquer. This ‘baked varnish’ technique had been developed in China, for articles of furniture, and perfected in Japan. Hence, goods treated in this way became known as ‘japanned’, and Pontypool became the leading producer of JAPANWARE in the western world. Although competition grew, for the next 100 years Pontypool japanware was considered to be the very best. The only memorial to this unique industry left in Pontypool today is the name Japan Street, where the japanware premises were once located.
IN THE EARLY hours of 15 April 1912, amateur wireless enthusiast ARTHUR MOORE was dozing fitfully in front of his radio in the old water-mill at Gelligroes, near Pontllanfraith, when he was jerked awake by an insistent tap-tapping coming across the airwaves, in Morse code. It was hard to make out, but it sounded like a distress call and Arthur thought he could make out the call sign of the RMS Titanic, then on her maiden voyage. However, it was very faint and a most unlikely scenario, and the next morning when Arthur told others what he had heard they were convinced he must have been mistaken. After all, the Titanic was unsinkable, wasn’t she? And then the news started to come in …
The mill, which is 400 years old, is fully restored and now houses a workshop for making candles as well as a small radio museum. Arthur Moore went on to work for Marconi – the firm that had made the radio with which he picked up the signals.
SLIP OFF THE M4 motorway at Junction 25 into CAERLEON and you go back in time 2,000 years, to THE ONLY ROMAN LEGIONARY FORT IN WALES, and one of only three in Britain (the others being Chester and York). Wales was Rome’s furthest outpost, a wild and dangerous place, and Caerleon, or Isca Silurum, was not just a fortress but a staging post and supply base. It was constructed by the River Usk in AD 75, about the same time as the Colosseum in Rome, and was home to the 2nd Augustan Legion. Caerleon is now THE ONLY PLACE IN EUROPE WHERE YOU CAN SEE A SURVIVING EXAMPLE OF A ROMAN BARRACKS.
In his History of the Kings of Britain, Geoffrey of Monmouth places the court of King Arthur at ‘The City of the Legions’, and it seems likely that he was referring to Caerleon, which in Welsh means ‘Fortress of the Legions’. This possibility brought Lord Tennyson to Caerleon in 1865, when he was researching his Arthurian Idylls of the King. He stayed at the Hanbury Arms by the river, and there you can still sit by the mullioned window where he sat looking out at the Usk and wrote, ‘The Usk murmurs by the windows and I sit like King Arthur at Caerleon …’
Tennyson was particularly intrigued by the mystery of a low grassy mound on the edge of the town, known as King Arthur’s Round Table. He never did get to find out what it was, since excavations of the mound didn’t start until 1926. It was then discovered that the mound was in fact the remains of THE BIGGEST ROMAN AMPHITHEATRE IN WALES, large enough to seat the entire legion of 6,000 men.
Using the Venerable Bede as his source, Geoffrey of Monmouth also mentions the City of the Legions as being the burial place of two Romano-Welsh Christian martyrs, JULIUS and AARON. In the late 3rd and early 4th centuries, the Roman Emperor Diocletian launched a persecution of Christians throughout the Empire, and three Romano-British Christians are known to have died for their faith. One was St Alban, who had a city named after him, and, according to Geoffrey, the others were, ‘two townsfolk in the City of the Legions, Julius and Aaron, who stood firm in the battle-line of Christ. They were torn limb from limb and mangled with unheard-of cruelty.’
CAERWENT, or Venta Silurum, lies some 5 miles (8 km) to the east of Caerleon, Isca Silurum, and the two centres grew up more or less alongside each other. Caerwent means ‘fortress with a market’ and is the derivation of the county name of Gwent. It was THE LARGEST CIVILIAN ROMAN SETTLEMENT IN WALES, and much of the modern village is still contained within the massive Roman walls and their bastions. You can still walk along much of the southern section of the walls, which in some places reach a height of 17 ft (5 m).
Of the three conurbations along the South Wales coast, NEWPORT, on the River Usk, is the least known and the least modernised. It is, however, the oldest of the three, first recorded 2,000 years ago as a harbour and gateway for the Roman fort at Caerleon, 3 miles (5 km) inland. There are the remains of a Norman castle and a real unexpected gem, a Norman cathedral gloriously situated on a hilltop and described by the historian E.A. Freeman as ‘a Norman jewel in a Gothic casket’.
The mighty tower of the Cathedral Church of St Woolas has stood as a landmark for ships in the Bristol Channel since the 15th century, when it was erected by Jasper Tudor, uncle of Henry VII. The view from the top is superb.
Within the church is the Galilee Chapel built by the Normans on the site of the original Saxon church. The doorway through to the nave is possibly the finest Norman arch in Wales, and is thought to incorporate stone from the camp at Caerleon. It is worth taking a minute to look through this arch at the sturdy pillars marching down the nave – a fine sight.
In the churchyard is a plaque commemorating those who died in the Chartist March on Newport in 1839, ten of whom are buried here in unmarked graves. On 4 November, led by the former mayor of Newport JOHN FROST, some 3,000 workers, mostly miners, descended on Newport in support of the People’s Charter drawn up the previous year, demanding voting and other democratic rights which are now commonplace. The size and mood of the gathering outside the Westgate Hotel alarmed the authorities, who ordered their soldiers to fire into the crowd, in an echo of the Merthyr Riots eight years earlier. More than 20 Chartists died, and the ringleaders were arrested and condemned to death for high treason. This sentence was commuted and they were transported to Tasmania. In 1854, they received a pardon and John Frost returned to live out the rest of his days in Bristol. He is now remembered in Newport by John Frost Square.
The highlight of the Newport Museum in John Frost Square is a 4th-century pewter bowl from Caerwent that is thought to be THE EARLIEST CHRISTIAN ANTIQUITY EVER FOUND IN WALES.
By the beginning of the 19th century Newport was exporting as much coal and iron as Cardiff, and in order to remain competitive it became essential to have some method of linking the docks with the industries across the River Usk. The Usk has A GREATER TIDAL RANGE THAN ANY OTHER RIVER IN BRITAIN, and it also has low banks, so constructing a bridge high enough to clear the busy shipping lanes beneath was quite a challenge. The answer was provided by a French engineer Ferdinand Arnodin, and in 1906 the NEWPORT TRANSPORTER BRIDGE was opened by the 1st Viscount Tredegar.
There is only one other transporter bridge in Britain, in Middlesbrough, and only four left working in the whole world. Newport’s is 645 ft (197 m) across, and can carry up to six cars and 120 people across the river at a height of 177 feet (54 m). It is slow, these days completely pointless, goes nowhere of interest and is the best ride in Wales, utterly spine-tingling as you dangle on slender wires above the swirling waters. It is also magnificent to gaze upon Newport’s emblem and arguably the most magnificent of the many monuments to Wales’s mighty industrial history. The bridge closed because of corrosion in 1985, but was refurbished, and reopened in 1995. You can walk across the top, or take the gondola at weekends.
Another unsung industrial monument can be found in Newport’s northern suburb of Rogerstone, now virtually cut off from the rest of Newport by the M4 motorway. Here, the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal descends from the hills via THE STEEPEST LOCK SYSTEM IN BRITAIN, a flight of 14 interdependent locks that falls 164 ft (50 m) in just under half a mile (740 m). The canal and the locks were built in 1790 to transport coal and iron to Newport, an incredible engineering feat for the time and still very impressive. There are wonderful canal-side walks from the Fourteen Locks Visitor Centre at the top of the system, at High Cross.
Newport’s most famous son was the original ‘super-tramp’, poet WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES. He was born, according to his Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, on 20 April 1871, in the Church House Inn, on the corner of Portland Street, and in 1938 he watched from the crowd as a plaque was unveiled on the inn wall, by John Masefield, recording Davies’s birthplace. In fact, he was born on 3 July 1871, at No. 6 Portland Street, which is now gone.
Details were never very important to Davies, who did indeed like to stand and stare (see above). At the age of 22, he took himself off to America to look for adventure, but instead lost a leg trying to jump onto a goods train, and returned to wander around England and Wales as a pedlar, writing poems about the countryside and the simple life. In 1908, his own simple life changed when Autobiography of a Super-Tramp was published, and its success opened the doors of literary society and a more conventional lifestyle. But he will always be best remembered as the super-tramp, and it was in this guise that he was a hero to Dylan Thomas.
TREDEGAR HOUSE IS the finest classical house in Wales but, no doubt thanks to its unprepossessing position next to the M4, on the edge of Newport, it is grievously unknown. It has been sympathetically restored by Newport Council and sits there, glowing a lovely orange pink, in a reduced parkland of some 60 acres (24 ha), a little oasis amongst the tumult.
The house as we see it today dates largely from the Stuart period of Charles II, circa 1664–72, but by then Tredegar had been home to the Morgan family for at least 150 years. It was Sir Charles Gould Morgan of Tredegar, president of THE WORLD’S FIRST LIFE ASSURANCE COMPANY, EQUITABLE LIFE, who was largely responsible for the growth of Newport as an industrial centre in the 18th century. He began the exploitation of the coal and iron on the estate, and built up a network of canals and roads giving access to the docks, including a toll road through the park that proved so lucrative that it became known as the ‘Golden Mile’.
His great-grandson, Captain Godfrey Morgan, took part in the Charge of the Light Brigade in 1854. Sir Briggs, the horse that bore Godfrey into the Valley of Death – and out again – was brought back to the stables at Tredegar for a well-earned retirement. The horse used to miss his master so much that he would frequently break out of his stall and wander through the house, whinnying, until he found Godfrey. Sir Briggs is buried beneath a cedar tree in the park, along with Godfrey’s two Skye terriers Peeps and Friday. Godfrey, a bachelor, was eventually made the 1st Viscount Tredegar in recognition of his public works in Newport.
Whereas his successor was a good huntin’, shootin’, fishin’ sort, the next Viscount Tredegar, Evan, was a little different. He saw himself as an artist and poet and filled Tredegar with exotic animals such as gorillas, bears and, his particular favourites, kangaroos, with whom he used to box. To break the ice at stuffy parties he trained his parrot, Blue Boy, to climb up inside his trousers and peep out through the fly, causing strong men to pale and well-bred ladies to swoon.
His mother, the former Lady Katharine Carnegie, thought she was a bird, and would go about the house making nests where she could roost. Apparently, when hungry, she would emit a noise something like a jackdaw and a footman would appear with her favourite tiffin, a dish of corn seed, steeped in medium sherry.
Evan was the last of the Morgans to live at Tredegar. He died childless in 1949, and the house was sold to become a boarding school. After years of neglect it was acquired by the town in 1974 and now serves as a shining example of what can be achieved by an enlightened council. Drivers rushing by on the M4 little know what a delight they are missing.
Another member of the Morgan family who made a name for himself was CAPTAIN SIR HENRY MORGAN (1635–88). He was born either at Llanrumney, near Cardiff, or Abergavenny – no one seems sure – and is believed to have lived at what is now the Penllwyn Hotel in Pontllanfraith, west of Pontypool. At the age of 20, Morgan sailed to the West Indies with an expedition led by Admiral Penn, father of the William Penn who would found Pennsylvania. The expedition captured Jamaica, and for the next 15 years, with the blessing of the English government, Captain Morgan sailed the Spanish Main as a buccaneer, looting and sacking Spanish ports and vessels. He eventually settled down to become Governor of Jamaica and is best remembered today as a brand of rum.
THE BORDER MARKET town of CHEPSTOW stands at the southern end of Offa’s Dyke. Chepstow Castle, perched on a rocky bluff 90 ft (27 m) above the River Wye, was THE FIRST STONE CASTLE IN BRITAIN. The central keep, 100 ft (30 m) by 40 ft (12 m), was begun in 1068 and is THE OLDEST OF ITS KIND IN BRITAIN. A third storey was added to the keep in the 13th century.
The best view of the castle is obtained from the elegant cast-iron bridge built across the Wye by John Rennie in 1816, one of the first of its kind in the world. A little further down river the railway used to cross the Wye on Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s tubular bridge, the first large iron bridge he ever built, opened in 1852. This was replaced in 1962. The contractor who created the tubes for the bridge used his experience to manufacture the first iron masts for ships. Brunel’s Great Eastern, launched in 1858, was the first vessel in the world to have masts made of iron, masts that were also manufactured at Chepstow.
There is a plaque down by the river commemorating the departure of John Frost, William Jones and Zephaniah Williams, the leaders of the Chartist March on Newport, who were deported from here to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) on 3 February 1840.
LABOUR POLITICIAN ANEURIN BEVAN (1897–1960) was born in TREDEGAR. Leader of the South Wales miners during the General Strike in 1926, he went on to become Labour MP for Ebbw Vale. As Minister for Health in the post-war Labour Government he was the chief promoter of the NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE, which came into being on 5 July 1948. When Bevan died in 1960, the Ebbw Vale constituency was taken over by Michael Foot, who would go on to lead the Labour Party from 1980 to 1983.
Labour politician NEIL KINNOCK, Lord Kinnock of Bedwellty, was born in Tredegar in 1942. In 1983 he became THE ONLY WELSH LEADER OF THE LABOUR PARTY.
Politician ROY JENKINS, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead (1920–2003), was born in ABERSYCHAN, son of local MP Arthur Jenkins. As Home Secretary in the 1960s he is responsible for creating the ‘Permissive Society’. In 1977 he became President of the European Commission and oversaw the introduction of the European Monetary System, forerunner of the Euro. In 1981 he left the Labour Party to co-found the Social Democratic Party, or SDP, along with Shirley Williams, David Owen and William Rodgers.
An oddity in the churchyard of St Mary’s Church in Monmouth is the grave of JOHN RENIE, who died in 1832 at the age of 33. His epitaph, ‘Here lies John Renie’, is written in the form of an acrostic that can be read upwards, downwards and backwards in scores of different directions – someone apparently worked out that if you included doglegs and zigzags it could be read in more than 40,000 ways.
In the church at LLANGATTOCK-VIBON-AVEL, 4 miles (6.4 km) north-west of Monmouth, is a plain brass that marks the last resting-place of CHARLES STEWART ROLLS (1877–1910). His family home, THE HENDRE, a fine gabled house, is just down the road. Charles Rolls was a dashing adventurer with a passion for the new machinery of the age. He drove one of the four first cars seen in England, made over 200 balloon ascents, and went over to America to meet Wilbur Wright so that he could bring back one of the first aeroplanes, a Wright Flyer. In 1904, he met engineer Henry Royce at the Midland Hotel in Manchester and they agreed to form a company, Rolls-Royce, to manufacture ‘the best car in the world’. In 1910, he became THE FIRST MAN TO FLY ACROSS THE ENGLISH CHANNEL AND BACK AGAIN, NON-STOP. One month later he was dead, THE FIRST BRITISH MAN TO DIE IN AN AEROPLANE ACCIDENT, when his Wright Flyer crashed during a flying exhibition over Bournemouth.
THE SKIRRID INN, north of Monmouth, dates from 1110 and is THE OLDEST INN IN WALES. Inside is a square spiral staircase which was used as a gallows, THE ONLY ONE OF ITS KIND IN BRITAIN. Condemned prisoners were hanged over the stairwell until dead.
It is almost impossible to miss the huge vault in the churchyard of St Bartholomew’s in LLANOVER, on the road from Pontypool to Abergavenny. Here lies ‘Big Ben’, SIR BENJAMIN HALL, Lord Llanover (1802–67) who, as Chief Commissioner for Works, oversaw the installation of the clock in St Stephen’s Tower at the Houses of Parliament, which ever since has borne his name. The battlemented gatehouse is all that remains of his home, Llanover Court, where he lived with his wife, AUGUSTA WADDINGTON, a great Welsh folklorist who assisted Lady Charlotte Guest with her translation of the Mabinogion.
On 16 August 1679, ST DAVID LEWIS, born in Abergavenny in 1616, was hung, drawn and quartered in the little town of USK, east of Pontypool. A victim of the hysteria surrounding Titus Oates’s ‘Popish Plot’ allegations, he was THE LAST CATHOLIC PRIEST TO DIE FOR HIS FAITH IN BRITAIN. He was canonised by Pope Paul VI in 1970.
THE FIRST GOLF COURSE EVER DESIGNED AND BUILT SPECIFICALLY TO HOST THE RYDER CUP has been constructed at the CELTIC MANOR RESORT in the Usk valley, 2 miles (3.2 km) outside Newport. The event will take place there in 2010, THE FIRST TIME THE RYDER CUP HAS EVER BEEN HELD IN WALES.
THE WORLD’S BIGGEST LUMP OF COAL, weighing 15 tons, can be seen in the grounds of BEDWELLTY HOUSE, in Bedwellty.
One of Wales’s most popular rock bands, the MANIC STREET PREACHERS, started out in BLACKWOOD, near Pontypool.
ASLEF, the largest of the railway unions, was formed at Griffithstown, in Pontypool, in 1880.
The SEVERN RAILWAY TUNNEL, linking Monmouthshire in Wales with Gloucestershire in England, is over 4¼ miles (6.9 km) long, making it THE LONGEST MAINLINE RAILWAY TUNNEL WHOLLY WITHIN BRITAIN. Lined with 76,400,000 bricks, it was opened in 1886 and comes ashore in Wales underneath the village of SUDBROOK. Here there is a vast pumping station that removes 60 million gallons of water from the tunnel every day.
Near the village of TINTERN, in the Wye valley, a brass plaque, erected by the National Brass Foundry Association, commemorates the fact that BRASS WAS FIRST MADE HERE BY ALLOYING COPPER WITH ZINC IN 1566.
PENHOW CASTLE, in delightful countryside between Newport and Chepstow, is THE OLDEST INHABITED CASTLE IN WALES. The core of the castle was built in 1129 by the Norman knight Sir Roger de St Maur, ancestor of Henry VIII‘s third wife Jane Seymour, mother of Edward VI. The castle was extended in the 15th century and has a wonderful Great Hall with a Minstrel’s Gallery. It is now a private home and, unfortunately, not open to the public.
