MONMOUTH—CHURCH, PRIORY, AND CASTLE—THE KYMIN—WONASTOW-HOUSE—TREOWEN—TROY-HOUSE—TRELECH—PERTHIR—NEWCASTLE—SCRENFRITH CASTLE—GROSSMONT CASTLE—JOHN OF KENT.

Monmouth is delightfully situated in a gently undulating valley; chiefly in a high state of cultivation, surrounded by high hills: it occupies a sort of peninsula formed by the conflux of the Wye and the Monnow; so that it is nearly incircled by the two rivers. The town is extensive, and contains many good houses; particularly in a principal broad street, which extends from the market-place to an old British or Saxon bridge and gateway over the Monnow. The market-place, with the town-hall over it, is a handsome building; but sadly disfigured by an awkward statue of Henry the Fifth, which, no doubt, was intended to ornament it. From this part a narrow street leads to St. Mary’s church, which is also a handsome modern edifice, chiefly remarkable for its grand lofty spire rising 200 feet from the foundation; the tower of which affords an interesting view of the surrounding districts. This structure is engrafted upon a Gothic church that belonged to an Alien Benedictine priory of Black Monks, which was founded in the reign of Henry the First, and dedicated to the Holy Virgin. The priory-house forms a large family residence belonging to Adam Williams, Esq.; and contains an apartment which the legend of the place declares to have been the library of the celebrated Geoffery of Monmouth; but the style of the building is by no means so ancient as the time of Geoffery, who, we find, was consecrated bishop of St. Asaph in 1152.

“The chronicle of Briton’s kings
From Brute to Arthur’s rayne,”

written by Geoffery, has long excited the attention and controversy of the leaned: by some it is implicitly believed; and rejected, as altogether fabulous, by others. The moderate opinion here, as in most other cases, is the best: this views it as founded on authentic documents, although distorted by monkish superstition and tricks, and a taste for the marvellous.

Monmouth Castle, situated on the banks of the Monnow in the northern part of the town, exhibits few memorials of its former extent and magnificence in its present very dilapidated state; and the remaining fragments lose much of their characteristic dignity from the bricky appearance given by the red grit stone of which they are constructed. Among these broken walls are shewn, with no small degree of exultation, traces of the chamber in which Henry the Fifth, the glory of Monmouth, was born. Adjoining to this is the ruin of a large apartment, sixty-three feet long by forty-six wide, which was probably the baronial hall, and in latter times formed the court of the Assizes. Other vestiges of the castle are evident among stables and out-houses: some vaults under the house of Mr. Cecil of the Dyffrin, are of the oldest character, and may be attributed to Saxon if not to Roman workmanship.

The general building of this castle (though of very remote foundation) may be considered as posterior to the Civil wars in the third Henry’s reign; when, we learn, the castle of Monmouth was taken and rased to the ground by Simon Montford, Earl of Leicester. A large mansion on the site of the castle, built with its materials, and engrafted on its ruins, is now occupied as a ladies’ boarding-school. Soon after the erection of this house, a Marchioness of Worcester went thither to lie-in of her first child, at the instance of her grandfather, Henry, first Duke of Beaufort, who was anxious that his descendant should draw his first breath “near the same spot of ground and space of air, where our great hero Henry the Fifth was born.”

Near the extremity of the town, by the side of the Monnow, is the county goal, a new massive stone building, which in its plan, regulations, and superintendance, does high credit to the pubic spirit of the county. Without the town, at the foot of the Monnow-bridge, is St. Thomas’s church, a curious old structure which is supposed to have been built by the Saxons.

Monmouth is supposed by Mr. Horsley to have been a Roman station, the Blestium of Antoninus. It is a borough and corporate town, governed by a mayor, and contains about six hundred houses, and two thousand six hundred inhabitants. Woollen caps were the staple manufacture of Monmouth when that article was in general use; and Shakspeare’s Fluellen alludes to this fashion: “If your Majesty is remembered of it, the Welchmen did goot service in a garden where leeks did grow, wearing leeks in their Monmouth caps.” But the town has now no manufacture, although there are some iron and tin works in the neighbourhood: its commerce depends on the navigation of the Wye, in the distribution of goods between Bristol, Hereford, and adjoining districts. Yet no small part of its thriving appearance may be attributed to the numerous gentry that are induced to fix their residence here from the pleasantness of the situation.

Chippenham meadow, an agreeable plain, inclosed by the town, the Wye, and the Monnow, is the general rendezvous of Gwentonian beauty on summer (and particularly on Sunday) evenings. We had the good fortune to be in Monmouth on a Sunday, and of course did not neglect to join the promenade; where many a squire of little manors eyed us with much more inquiry than cordiality. Their dulcineas,

“Healthful and strong, full as the summer rose
Blown by prevailing suns,”

displayed the vigour of youth and Wales, and possessed decided points of feminine attraction. But who would leave London to describe female beauty?

In the vicinity of Monmouth is a remarkably high hill, called the Kymin, which rises from the banks of the Wye, on the Gloucestershire side of the river. A pleasant walk is traced to its summit, from which a wonderful range of prospect extends to a circumference of near three hundred miles. It would be tedious to enumerate the multifarious objects that present themselves in this great prospect: if any one be eminently beautiful, it is the diversified undulating vale of Monmouth, enlivened by its picturesque town and spire, and watered by the Wye, the Monnow, and the Trothy, limpidly meandering through fertile hollows, and at length uniting, in the course of the former river, at the foot of the hill. At the top of the Kymin, a handsome pavilion has been lately erected for the accommodation of parties; its summit is also adorned with a rich wood called Beaulieu grove, which, descending over part of its precipitous sides, forms its proudest ornament. Several walks cut through the wood terminate at the brow of steep declivities, commanding great and enchanting views; and which in the spring, as I am told, from the universality of apple orchards in this district, are as singular as they are beautiful.

There are several antique mansions in the neighbourhood of Monmouth that deserve notice. About a mile from the town, on the left of the road to Raglan, is Wonastow-house, formerly a residence of a branch of the Herbert family, [285] which is conjectured to have been built about the reign of Henry the Sixth. Its situation, on a gentle eminence commanding many extensive views, is extremely pleasant; and the surrounding farm-lands still bear traces of its park in several groves of ancient oaks and elms. The edifice, though much diminished in extent and divided into two distinct habitations, is still a venerable relic of the times, and contains several original family portraits. The old chapel belonging to the mansion is now applied to domestic use.

Treowen, situated about a mile further westward, to the north of the road to Raglan, was once a splendid mansion, built by Inigo Jones, and which belonged to another scion from the Herbert stock. The position of the house and grounds, now laid out in a farm, is very delightful, watered by the meandering Trothy, and still exhibiting a profusion of rich woods. Though occupied as a farmhouse, and much reduced in dimensions, the mansion continues to shew many marks of its ancient grandeur, in the spacious and decorative style of the apartments, a noble staircase of oak, and its ornamented porch.

Troy-house, standing within a mile south-east of Monmouth, near the road to Chepstow, was a residence of a further ramification of the prolific Herbert race. [287] Part of the ancient residence is visible in a Gothic gateway; but the house is of a later date, its erection being, as well as the preceding, attributed to Inigo Jones. Neither the house, though extensive, nor its situation, in a hollow near the river Trothy, possess any claim to admiration. Throughout the apartments a large collection of family pictures is arranged, which contains the portraits of many distinguished characters, but very few specimens of fine painting. In the housekeeper’s room is a curious oak chimney-piece, brought from Raglan Castle, carved with scriptural subjects; and in a room on the third floor is another ancient chimney-piece inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and curiously ornamented with devices of Love and Plenty.

About three miles further on the road to Chepstow is the village of Trelech, which is supposed to have derived its name from three druidical stones standing in a field adjoining the road, near the church. They are placed upright, or rather inclining; of different heights, varying between ten and fifteen feet; and the exterior stones are the one fourteen, and the other twenty feet distant from the middle pillar: their substance is a concretion of silicious pebbles in a calcareous bed, commonly called pudding-stone, and of which some neighbouring rocks consist. This monument of antiquity is considered to have been the supporting part of a cromlech; but the stones being so far asunder invalidates the conjecture. Various large masses of the same sort of stone in the vicinity of Trelech seem to indicate the remains of other works of the same kind.

In the village, inclosed by a garden, is an earthen mound four hundred and fifty feet in diameter, encircled by a moat, and connected with extensive entrenchments; which is imagined to have been a Roman work, and afterwards to have been the site of a castle belonging to the Earls of Clare. The village is also remarkable for a chalybeate well that was formerly much attended. Near the church, which deserves to be noticed for the agreeable proportions of its Gothic members and its handsome spire, is a pedestal with a sun-dial, supposed to be of high antiquity: it bears a Latin inscription, commemorating Harold’s victory over the Britons. Large quantities of iron scoria, scattered over the fields near the village, are generally allowed to indicate that a Roman bloomery was established near the spot.

From this place the road soon ascends the Devaudon height, traverses a tract of forest called Chepstow Park, and in the course of its progress embraces several superb and extensive views; in which the varieties of the Wye, of hanging woods, wild heathy mountains, and rich inclosures, rise in succession.

We made an excursion from Monmouth, on the road to Hereford, as far as Grosmont. Proceeding through a charming country about three miles, we struck off on the right to visit Perthir, a very ancient seat of the Herbert family. Of the castellated mansion, surrounded by a moat and two drawbridges, few vestiges appear in the present diminished and patched-up building; yet some marks of former magnificence meet the observer, in a long vaulted hall, with a music gallery at the end, a large Gothic window with stone compartments, and the massive oak beams of a long passage. The extensive manors that were attached to Perthir, and which, as tradition relates, extended from thence to Ross, now exhibit but a sorry remnant of past opulence.

Mr. Lorimer, the present possessor of the estate, and a descendant of the Herberts by the female line, merrily relates an anecdote rising out of a contest for precedence between the houses of Perthir and Werndee; and which, it has been remarked, was carried on with as much inveteracy as that between the houses of York and Lancaster, and was only perhaps less bloody, as they had not the power of sacrificing the lives of thousands in their foolish quarrel. Mr. Proger, of Werndee, in company with a friend, returning from Monmouth to his home, was suddenly overtaken by a violent storm; and, unable to proceed, groped his way for refuge to his cousin Powell’s, at Perthir. The family was retired to rest; but the loud calls of the tempest-beaten travellers soon brought Mr. Powell to a window; and a few words informed him of his relation’s predicament; requesting a night’s lodging: “What! is it you, cousin Proger? you and your friend shall be instantly admitted;—but upon one condition, that you will never dispute with me hereafter upon my being the head of the family.”—“No, sir,” returned Mr. Proger, “were it to rain swords and daggers, I would drive this night to Werndee; rather than lower the consequence of my family.” Here a string of arguments was brought forward on each side; which however interesting to the parties, would prove very trifling in relation; and which, like all other contests grounded in prejudice and proceeded in with petulance; but served to fix both parties more firmly in their errors. They parted in the bitterest enmity; and the stranger, who had silently waited the issue of the contest, in vain solicited a shelter from the storm; for he was a friend of cousin Proger’s!

Leaving Perthir, we soon passed through the little village of Newcastle, which derives its name from a castle that may still be traced in an earthen mound 300 feet in circumference, and some intrenchments, but whose history no tradition reaches. This barrow, and an ancient oak of extraordinary size, are considered by the superstitious neighbourhood to be under the immediate protection of spirits and fairies, and to form the scene of their nocturnal revels. A spring near the village is deemed miraculous in the cure of rheumatic and other disorders.

Within a mile from this place we struck off the turnpike towards Screnfrith Castle, situated on the banks of the Monnow, in a sequestered spot environed by high hills. This fortress is of the simplest construction; its area, of a trapezium form, is merely surrounded by a curtain wall with circular towers covering each angle, and a demi-turret projecting from the middle of one side. Near the centre of the area is a juliet, or high round tower, upon a mound, which formed the keep, the door and window apertures of which are circularly arched; but the exterior walls of the castle appear to have been originally only furnished with oilets or chinks for shooting arrows through. Encumbered by the lowly habitations of a poor village, it has little claim to picturesque merit from most points of view; but on the opposite side of the Monnow, combined with a Gothic bridge of two arches crossing the stream, it forms a pleasing picture. Screnfrith Castle is allowed to be the oldest in Monmouthshire; it is certainly of British erection, and is probably of as remote antiquity as any in Wales.

Screnfrith, Grosmont, and White Castles, formerly defended the lordship of Overwent; which, extending from the Wye to the Usk, nearly comprised the whole northern portion of Monmouthshire. This tract of country, with its castles, fell into the hands of Brian Fitz Count, Earl of Hereford, who came over with the Conqueror; but soon deviated from his family, and was afterwards seized by Henry the Third, and conferred on his favourite Hubert de Burgh. Upon the disgrace of that virtuous and able minister, the capricious monarch granted the three castles to his son the Earl of Lancaster; and, with Caldecot castle, they still remain annexed to the dutchy.

The continuance of our journey to Grossmont, wandering in an irriguous valley among bye-lanes that were scarcely passable, although it proved very tedious in travelling, afforded us a succession of the most pleasing retired scenes imaginable. On our right a diversity of swells and hollows, variously clad in wild woods or cultivation, extended throughout our ride, where the lively and transparent Monnow, illumined by

“The noon-tide beams
Which sparkling dances on the trembling stream,”

serpentized its current in endless variety. Immediately on our left, the Graig, a huge solitary mountain, reared its towering sides from the low lands in uncontended majesty, and accompanied our road to the pleasing little village of Grosmont.

This place stands at the north-eastern limit of Monmouthshire, in an agreeable undulating valley, diversified with wood and pasture, and beautifully accompanied by the meandering Monnow, here wantoning its most fantastic course. On an eminence near the village, and swelling above the river, is the picturesque ruin of its castle; a pile of no great extent, but well disposed, and profusely decorated with shrubs and ivy. The form of the structure is irregular: large circular towers cover the angles of the ramparts; within which are traces of the baronial hall, and other apartments, and beyond the mount are some remains of the barbican, or redoubt, and several entrenchments. All the door and window arches are pointed Gothic, and of the proportion in use about the thirteenth century; but the foundation of the castle is supposed to be coeval with that of Screnfrith’s.—Grosmont church is a large Gothic structure, built in the form of a Roman cross; and, with its octagon tower, and high tapering spire, is a conspicuous ornament to the village.

Though now an insignificant cluster of habitations, Grosmont was formerly a town of some note. Many exterior traces of buildings, and raised causeways, constructed like Roman roads with large blocks of stone, diverging from it, prove its antique extent and importance to have been considerable: nor is the legend of the place deficient in asserting its quondam consequence.

But with still higher interest, with more voluble earnestness, the natives recount the exploits of their reputed necromancer, John of Kent. Among a thousand other instances of his magical skill, they confidently assure you, that when he was a boy, being ordered to protect some corn from the birds, he conjured all the crows in the neighbourhood into a barn without a roof, and by force of his incantations obliged them to remain there while he visited Grosmont fair. A greater service that he performed for the country was, his building the bridge over the Monnow in one night by the agency of one of his familiars. Long did his strange actions frighten men out of their wits; and at length, dying, he outwitted the devil; for, in consideration of services while living, he agreed to surrender himself to his satanic majesty after his death, whether he was buried in or out of church; but, by ordering his body to be interred under the church wall, he contrived to slip out of the contract. A stone in the church-yard, near the chancel, is said to mark the spot of this interment.

Higher tradition relates, that this extraordinary-personage was a monk, who, possessing a greater knowledge in natural philosophy than could at that time be generally comprehended, was reputed a sorcerer. The family of the Scudamores, at Kentchurch-house, about a mile from Grosmont, where he became domesticated, had a Latin translation of the Bible written by him on vellum, but which is now lost. An ancient painting of him upon wood is, however, preserved in the mansion; and a cellar in the house is described to have been the stable of his horses; steeds of no vulgar pedigree, which carried him through the air with more than the speed of witches.

From a collation of different legends and circumstances, several respectable enquirers are inclined to believe, that this necromancer was no other than the famous Owen Glendower; who, after his defeat, and the dispersion of his army, concealed himself in the disguise of a bard, or wizard. A strong circumstance which favours this conjecture is, that the daughter of Glendower married a Scudamore, who at the time occupied Kentchurch-house. It may also be remarked, that neither the time of the chief’s death, nor the place of his sepulture, were ever positively ascertained.

Upon our return to Monmouth from this excursion, we had the good fortune to fall into the company of Mr. Wathen of Hereford, the benefit of whose local information and obliging assiduities has been felt by numerous tourists, as well as ourselves. This gentleman pointed out the most striking beauties of the Wye toward Ross; and of his directions we gladly availed ourselves the following morning, when we bade adieu to Wales and Monmouthshire. But, as it is my object to effect a general delineation of that tract of country, I shall not hesitate to break the thread of my tour, and suspend a description of the Wye’s scenery and some further continuance of our route, while I traverse the north-western part of Monmouthshire, and the eastern frontier of South-Wales, which yet remains unexplored. In this part of my work, I must describe things as they appeared to me six years since, when I visited this portion of country in my return from a tour through the North of England and Wales, assisted by the best documents and observations that I have since been able to procure.