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Extract: Buildings of Wales: Monmouthshire and Gwent

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About the Area of Monmouthshire

A thousand years of change in the governing of south-east Wales lead to Monmouthshire being created out of the old Kingdom of Gwent. It is unusually closely tied to England.

The name Gwent is derived from Caer-went, the Celtic form of the Roman Vnnta Silurum, a fact which reflects the continuity between Roman settlement in the area and subsequent Celtic kingdom of Gwent, which was bounded by the River Wye to the east and to the west by the River Usk. That kingdom was eliminated shortly after 1066 at the Norman subjugation of south-east Wales, and replaced by several small and shifting Marcher lordships, including those of Gwynllwg, which controlled the mountainous area immeadiately west of the River Usk, and Abergavenny to the north. Although these lordships were in the hands of the Normans and their English descendants, the Welsh name of Gwent continued to be unofficially applied to the entire area.

The Act of Union of 1536, whereby the Tudor dynasty extended its rule over Wales as well as England, abolished the lordships and established in their place thirteen shires on the English model. The area which had informally been known as Gwent now became Monmouthshire, with Monmouth as its country town. This disposition proved durable over more than four centuries, and was superseded only in 1974.

Then eight new counties took the place of the former thirteen, taking account of the drastic differences in population which had developed in different parts of Wales as a result of industrialization since the early 19th century. In this reshuffle Monmouthshire was the only one of the thirteen counties to remain an entity, neither subdivided nor amalgamated. Yet, such was the desire to link this administrative change to an emphasis on Welshness, that the virtually unchanged entity had to change its name, and Gwent was reborn. Within the newly named county of Gwent were five new subdivisions: the county borough of Newport and four districts, covering the rural eastern two-thirds of the old county.

Finally, in 1996, the subdivision into five became much more significant when it was made the basis of a single tier of local government. The county of Gwent was abolished, and five unitary authorities were established along the lines of the former districts. Monmouth district was renamed as the county of Monmouthshire. So today Gwent does not officially exist, and Monmouthshire has shrunk to two-thirds its former size. Local loyalty, however, keeps both names alive.

Wales or England?

The question seems to have originated in a provision of the second Act of Union, of 1543, which for legal purposes apportioned twelve of the thirteen Welsh counties to four Welsh circuits, but placed Monmouthshire in the Oxford circuit. The county was also a little more strongly represented in the Westminster Parliament than any other. On this slim foundation it became common to find official references to 'South Wales and Monmouthshire'. and from 1974, under the revived name of Gwent, did it become indisputable that the county was fully a part of Wales.

Nevertheless, as is shown not least by the history of its architecture, the nearness of Bristol had a major effect on the county's economy and culture. Immigration into the county from England has been and continues to be substantial. In the twelfth century the Welsh language has been thoroughly in retreat, much more so than in some other parts of Wales, so that in the 1991 census less thn 3 per cent of the residents of Gwent reported that they could speak Welsh. Today, even among the farming community, West Country accents are more commonly heard than Welsh ones. The anglicizing of Welsh place names has produced more bizarre hybrids here than anywhere else in Wales.

Landscape

Monmouthshire is quite a small county; of the thirteen counties into which Wales Wales was subdivided in 1536, only three were smaller. Yet, with a population of 434,244 in 1991, it is more heavily populated than any other part of the country except Glamorgan. Among Welsh towns, Newport is exceeded in size only by Cardiff and Swansea. Improved road communications since the 1960s, above all the M4 motorway linking Wales to England across the Severn Bridge and Crossing, have helped to concentrte Welsh industrial growth around Newport.

The centre, N and E remain rural, a close-textured, hedge-enclosed countryside in which scattered churches and farmsteads maintain much of medieval and Tudor pattern of settlement, when the spread of corn-growing led to enclosure of the lowlands. The towns planted in the late 12th Century, Abergavenny, Chepstow, Monmouth and Usk, continue to serve as market centres.

The general configuration of the landscape can be likened to an amphitheatre. The arena is the Vale of Usk, though the Vale is hardly anywhere flat, but threaded by miniature twisting ridges and valleys as the River Usk pursues its winding way south east-wards from Abergavenny and its tributary the Olway Brook meanders south west-wards from Monmouth.

The Vale is bounded on all sides, more or less firmly, by hills. To the north two isolated mountains appear in every view, the shapely, symmetrical Sugarloaf, and Skirrid with its cloven outline. Beyond them extends an out-lier, the beautiful, steep-sided Vale of Ewyas, enfolding Llanthony Priory. To the east the ground rises by means of dramatically wooded slopes to the Trellech ridge, and beyond it the gorge of the River Wye, which forms the county boundary in this direction. To the west is the long, even ridge which terminated at its northern end in the crouching form of the Blorenge, and beyond which lie the industrial Valleys. Interrupted at Pontypool, the ridge rises again to the south and forms a splendid backdrop to Cwmbran, before dying away as the River Ebbw flows south east-wards to join the River Usk south west of Newport. Finally, to the south, the ridge over which spread the eastern suburbs of Newport rises steadily to become a steep flank to the lower Usk Valley, and then to stretch across east-wards, covered by the extensive tracts of ancient Wentwood.

Building Materials

Almost everywhere there is usable STONE, and in one or two localized sites freestones could be found. The geologically oldest stone, the Old Red Sandstone of the Devonian series, is the most widespread, occurring everywhere in the north-eastern and central parts of the county. In colour it varies from a strong purple to mauve and even grey. Blocks can also be found in a great range of sizes, from the megaliths used in a few medieval church towers to hand-sized pieces. The choicest stone, which could be cut for mouldings, was the pinkish-grey type quarried in the neighbourhood of Tintern, and used for all the buildings at Tintern Abbey, for dressings for Roger Bigod's late 13th Century works at Chepstow Castle and for the late 16th Century remodelled material for medieval churches and post-medieval farmhouses throughout the north-eastern half of the county, though the rough-textured walls which resulted would originally have been given a coating of lime-mortar render. More practical was the Victorian preference for giving Old Red Sandstone a hammerdressed or rock-faced texture, as for example as Abergavenny Town Hall.

Next in age is the Carboniferous Limestone which appears so dramatically in the cliffs of the lower Wye Valley between Tintern and Chepstow. Here it is quite a dazzling white, and white or grey limestone could be quarried in the hills south of Wentwood. Local limestone could be quarried in the hills south of Wentwood. Local limestone was used by the Romans in small, roughly squared blocks at Caerleon and Caerwent, and seems to have been extensively reused in the late 11th Century in the keep at Chepstow Castle. Other, later, buildings at Chepstow are constructed of Carboniferous Limestone, most conspiculously the early 18th Century Thomas Powis Almshouses, where its rough, irregular surface conflicts with the precision of the classical design. Carboniferous Limestone can be found used in combination with Old Red Standstone at Newport Castle, and other late medieval buildings in the vicinity, for example Llanwern Church and Church House, Christchurch. These too were doubtless originally intended to be rendered.

Exposed TIMBER outside and in was normal in house-building from the late Middle Ages until the mid 16th Century. Thereafter stone walling took over, so that today surviving external external timber-framing is extremely rare. What has survived much better is the substantial oak carpentry used for doors and windows in farmhouses up to c. 1700. These timber members, used unusually lavishly in Monmouthshire, it seems, have the bulk and mouldings associated with stonework. Internally, the achievements of local carpenters and joiners are even more memorable. Massive, richly moulded ceiling beams and joists, and handsome timber partitions are characteristic feature of these houses.

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