Iron furnaces of the Wye—Lidbroke—Nurse of Henry V.—Coldwell Rocks—Symond’s Yat—New Weir—Monmouth.

The woods rising amphitheatrically on the left bank, just before reaching Ruerdean, are called Bishop’s Wood; and there will be observed, for the first time of their presenting themselves conspicuously, the iron furnaces, which form a very striking characteristic of the river.

The iron furnaces on the Wye rather add to than diminish the effect of the scenery. This is caused by the abundance of wood in the furnace districts, which conceals the details, while it permits the smoke to ascend in wreaths through the trees, and float like a veil around the hills. These works, however, are merely a modern revival of a species of industry which extends backwards beyond the reach of history. The heaps of cinders which are discovered on the hills of Monmouthshire are the production either of bloomeries, the most ancient mode of fusing iron, or of furnaces of a very antique construction. The operation of smelting was performed in both of these by means of charcoal; and after the lands were cleared, the want of fuel led to the decline of the iron works. About eighty years ago, in consequence of the discovery of the mode of making pig iron, and subsequently even bar iron, with coal instead of charcoal, this branch of industry suddenly revived; although on the Wye charcoal is still burnt, and made upon the spot, where, instead of vulgarising the district, it adds a very remarkable feature to the picturesque.

At Lidbroke, on the same side, the commoner sympathies of life come into play, and the vulgar occupations of men serve at once to diversify the scene, and even to give it a new character of the picturesque. The lower passage has hitherto been chiefly distinguished by a romantic grandeur, both in the forms of nature, and the associations of history; and even the iron furnaces, from the circumstances we have mentioned, have added a charm congenial to the character of the picture. At Lidbroke, the new adjunct is nothing more than a wharf, with little vessels lying near it,—boats passing and repassing,—horses, carts, men, women, and children stirring along the banks: but the whole, in such a spot, forms an assemblage which adds, by contrast, to the general effect.

On the opposite bank the district of Monmouthshire, called Welsh Bicknor, commences—for we have hitherto been in Hereford—and Courtfield claims our attention for a moment, as the place where Henry V. is said to have been nursed, under the care of the countess of Salisbury. The remains of a bed, and an old cradle, were formerly shown as relics of the Monmouth hero. Half a mile further down the river is Welsh Bicknor Church, which has puzzled the antiquarians by its sepulchral effigy, representing a recumbent female figure in stone, not ungracefully dressed in a loose robe, but without inscription or coat of arms. Tradition will have it that this is the countess of Salisbury; and it is perhaps correct in the person, though wrong in the name, for the lady who nursed Henry at Courtfield (supposing him to have been there at all) was, in all probability, Lady Montacute, who married a second son of the first earl of Salisbury, but was no countess herself. Her son, however, Sir John de Montacute, who possessed the manor of Welsh Bicknor, succeeded to the earldom, and became earl-marshal of England. It was he who was chief of the Lollards, and was murdered in 1400 by the populace of Cirencester. The manor, although falling to the crown on account of his supposed treason, was afterwards restored to the family, and became the property of his descendant Richard, the great earl of Warwick and Salisbury. Dugdale traces this ominous heirloom to Margaret, grand-daughter of the great earl, daughter of the duke of Clarence, and wife of Lord Montague. This lady, after witnessing the execution of her brother Edward, earl of Warwick, and her son Henry Lord Montague, was herself beheaded in 1541. The manor of Welsh Bicknor, and the mansion of Courtfield, passed subsequently into the ancient family of Vaughan. We may mention here, however, although the circumstance is of no great consequence, that Sir Samuel Meyrick assigns the costume of the figure in Welsh Bicknor Church to the era of Edward I., about a century before that of Henry V.

A short distance below the church this abutment of Monmouthshire terminates, and the right bank of the river lies as before in Hereford, the left in Gloucester. At Coldwell, the view is closed in by a magnificent rock scene, differing entirely in character from any yet afforded by the Wye. To suffer this to appear—supposing the traveller to be descending the river—a wooded hill, called Rosemary Topping, one of the common features of the stream, shifts like a scene in a theatre, and becomes a side-screen; so that the almost naked cliff remains the principal object, and confers its character upon the view, to which the river and its banks to the right and left are only adjuncts.

The first grand mass of rock is nearly insulated, and reminds one at first sight of the keep of some ruined castle. But the Coldwell rocks want no associations of the kind: they are fragments of the temples of nature, and have nothing to do with the history of man. To our judgment, the shadowy hollows scooped out of the sides of the precipices, and overhung by foliage, which are nothing more than the sites of lime kilns, are more advantageous to the picture than the finest ruins imaginable. They come in without pretence; they make no effort at rivalry; but present the idea of human nature in an attitude of befitting humility and simplicity. “These,” says the German prince, “are craggy and weatherbeaten walls of sandstone, of gigantic dimension, perpendicular or overhanging, projecting abruptly from amid oaks, and hung with rich festoons of ivy. The rain and storms of ages have beaten and washed them into such fantastic forms, that they appear like some caprice of human art. Castles and towers, amphitheatres and fortifications, battlements and obelisks mock the wanderer, who fancies himself transported into the ruins of a city of some extinct race. Some of these picturesque masses are at times loosened by the action of the weather, and fall thundering from rock to rock, with a terrific plunge into the river.”

From Symond’s Yat to the New Weir, this kind of scenery continues; although the masses of cliff of course change their form and situation. The river, in a portion of its course, washes their base, at one time an almost perpendicular wall, at another clothed in woods till near the summit, which is seen rising out of the foliage, and tracing its battlemented outline upon the sky. From these two points the distance is only six hundred yards by land, and not less than four miles by water; and the shorter route is in this case the better. On the river, we soon lose the magnificence of the picture; while on shore, there is superadded to this a view of the extravagant mazes of the Wye on either side of the neck of land on which the spectator stands. If it be added that the point of view, Symond’s Yat, appeared to Mr. Coxe to be two thousand feet high (although this is an evident mistake), it will readily be imagined that this scene is of itself worth a pilgrimage to the Wye. The prospect, comprehending portions of Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, and Monmouthshire, embraces the following objects, according to those who are versed in the local names. To the north is seen Coppet Wood Hill, interspersed with rock and common;—to the north-west appear the spire and village of Goodrich, and, at the foot of the hill, Rocklands and Huntsholm Ferry;—to the west, Hunthsolm, behind which is Whitchurch, and, in the distance, the Welsh hills;—to the south-west, the mountainous side of the Great Doward;—to the south, Staunton Church, and the Buck-stone, upon a promontory; and below, Highmeadow Woods and the river; on the left, the rock of the New Weir, and on the right, the rocky wall of the east side of the Doward;—to the south-east, the village of English Bicknor, a side view of Coldwell Rocks, and Rosemary Topping;—and, to the east, Ruerdean Wood, with the church in the distance, Bishop’s Wood, and Courtfield, with the woody ridges of Hawkwood and Puckwood completing the panorama.

The New Weir

Gilpin calls the New Weir the second grand scene on the Wye.

“The river,” says he, “is wider than usual in this part, and takes a sweep round a towering promontory of rock, which forms the side-screen on the left, and is the grand feature of the view. It is not a broad, fractured piece of rock, but rather a woody hill, from which large projections in two or three places burst out, rudely hung with twisting branches, and shaggy furniture; which, like the mane round the lion’s head, gives a more savage air to these wild exhibitions of nature. Near the top a pointed fragment of solitary rock, rising above the rest, has rather a fantastic appearance—but it is not without its effect in marking the scene . . . On the right side of the river, the bank forms a woody amphitheatre, following the course of the stream round the promontory. Its lower skirts are adorned with a hamlet, in the midst of which volumes of thick smoke, thrown up at intervals from an iron forge, as its fires receive fresh fuel, add double grandeur to the scene. . . .

“But what peculiarly marks this view, is a circumstance on the water. The whole river at this place makes a precipitate fall—of no great height indeed, but enough to merit the name of a cascade, though to the eye above the stream it is an object of no consequence. In all the scenes we had yet passed, the water moving with a slow and solemn pace, the objects around kept time, as it were, with it; and every steep, and every rock which hung over the river, was solemn, tranquil, and majestic. But here the violence of the stream, and the roaring of the waters, impressed a new character on the scene: all was agitation and uproar, and every steep and every rock stared with wildness and terror.”

Let us add the testimony of another great authority on the picturesque; more especially as his remarks serve to corroborate our own on the effect received by the river from objects which elsewhere are mean and common.

“A scene at the New Weir on the Wye, which in itself is truly great and awful, so far from being disturbed, becomes more interesting and important by the business to which it is destined. It is a chasm between two high ranges of hills, that rise almost perpendicularly from the water: the rocks on the sides are mostly heavy masses, and their colour is generally brown; but here and there a pale craggy shape starts up to a vast height above the rest, unconnected, broken, and bare: large trees frequently force out their way amongst them; and many of these stand far back in the covert, where their natural dusky hue is heightened by the shadow that overhangs them. The river too, as it retires, loses itself in the woods, which close immediately above, then rise thick and high, and darken the water. In the midst of all this gloom is an iron forge, covered with a black cloud of smoke, and surrounded with half-burnt ore, with coal, and with cinders: the fuel for it is brought down a path, worn into steps narrow and steep, and winding among precipices; and near it is an open space of barren moor, about which are scattered the huts of the workmen. It stands close to the cascade of the Weir, where the agitation of the current is increased by large fragments of rocks, which have been swept down by floods from the banks, or shivered by tempests from the brow; and the sullen sound, at stated intervals, of the strokes from the great hammer in the forge, deadens the roar of the waterfall. Just below it, while the rapidity of the stream still continues, a ferry is carried across it; and lower down the fishermen use little round boats called truckles (coracles), the remains perhaps of the ancient British navigation, which the least motion will overset, and the slightest touch may destroy. All the employments of the people seem to require either exertion or caution; and the ideas of fear or danger which attend them give to the scene an animation unknown to the solitary, though perfectly compatible with the wildest romantic situation.” [85]

To this, however, we must add as a note, that both Weir and forge have now vanished. The more headlong rush and louder roar of the river mark the place where the former stood; and some limekilns contribute the smoke of the latter without its noise.

During the whole of this part of the passage, the stream is interrupted by fragments of rock, around which the water rushes tumultuously; but at the New Weir these interruptions, above noticed, acquire a character of sublimity, when taken in conjunction with the rest of the picture. The river, roaring and foaming, is in haste to escape, and at length is lost to the eye, as it seems to plunge for ever into sepulchral woods.

Beyond this, there are several other rock scenes, but none that will bear description after the foregoing; although to the traveller wearied with excitement, they come in with good effect. Below New Weir, the river stretches with a curve between Highmeadows Wood on the left bank, and the precipitous cliffs of the Great Doward on the right. Then the Little Doward peeps over a screen of rocks and shrubs. These two hills are called King Arthur’s Plain, and between these is King Arthur’s Hall, the level of an exhausted iron mine. Then we pass a cluster of rocks called St. Martin’s or the Three Sisters, and a pool of the river named St. Martin’s Well, where the water is said to be seventy feet deep. Various seats and cottages give variety to the picture, situated in the midst of rich woods and undulating eminences; and at length the landscape sinks calmly down, and Monmouth—“delightsome Monmouth”—is seen in long perspective, terminating a reach of the river.