Grade I listed buildings in Monmouthshire

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Monmouthshire shown within Wales

Monmouthshire is a county and principal area of Wales. It borders Torfaen and Newport to the west; Herefordshire and Gloucestershire to the east; and Powys to the north. The largest town is Abergavenny, with the other major towns being Chepstow, Monmouth, and Usk.[1] The county is 850 km2 (330 sq mi) in extent,[2] with a population of 95,200 as of 2020.[3] The present county was formed under the Local Government (Wales) Act 1994, which came into effect in 1996, and comprises some sixty percent of the historic county.[4][5] Between 1974 and 1996, the county was known by the ancient title of Gwent,[6] recalling the medieval Welsh kingdom.[7] In his essay on local government in the fifth and final volume of the Gwent County History, Robert McCloy suggests that the governance of "no county in the United Kingdom in the twentieth century was so transformed as that of Monmouthshire".[8]

In the United Kingdom, the term "listed building" refers to a building or other structure officially designated as being of special architectural, historical or cultural significance. Listing was begun by a provision in the Town and Country Planning Act 1947. Once a building is listed, strict limitations are imposed on the modifications allowed to its structure or fittings. In Wales,[9] authority for listing under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 lies with Cadw.[10] Listed buildings are categorised into three grades:

  • Grade I – buildings of exceptional interest, only 2.5% of listed buildings in England and Wales are Grade I;
  • Grade II* – buildings of particular importance with more than special interest, 5.8% of listed buildings in England and Wales are Grade II*;
  • Grade II – buildings of special interest; 91.7% of all listed buildings in England and Wales are in this class.[11]

There are 53 Grade I listed buildings in Monmouthshire.[note 1][12] These consist of twenty-four churches, a priory and an abbey, eight castles, seven houses, two bridges, a barn, a cross, a farm, a folly, a gatehouse, a hotel, a municipal building, a stables, and two elements of town walls. The journalist Simon Jenkins notes the county's "fine collection" of castles,[13] mostly dating from the Norman invasion of Wales, and describes Chepstow as "the glory of medieval south Wales".[14] The castle at Raglan is later, dating from the mid-fifteenth century.[15] The fortified bridge over the River Monnow at Monmouth is the only remaining fortified river bridge in the country with its gate tower standing on the bridge, and has been described as "arguably the finest surviving medieval bridge in Britain".[16] Monmouthshire has a more "modest"[13] range of churches, although that at Bettws Newydd has "perhaps the most complete rood arrangement remaining in any church in England and Wales".[17] The county's Grade I listed abbey, at Tintern, became a focal point of the Wye Tour[18] in the late-eighteenth century.[19] The Monmouthshire writer and artist, Fred Hando, chronicled the history of the county in some 800 newspaper articles written between the 1920s and the 1960s and published in the South Wales Argus, focusing on "the little places of a shy county".[20] Among the Grade I listed structures Hando described were "the tallest house in Monmouthshire" at Treowen,[21] "the most crooked church in Britain" at Cwmyoy,[22] and the Arts and Crafts sgraffito at Llanfair Kilgeddin.[23]

Notable people associated with Monmouthshire's Grade I listed buildings include Henry V, born at Monmouth Castle in 1387;[24] the medieval soldier and statesman William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke, who undertook major construction at Chepstow Castle;[25] and Henry Somerset, 1st Marquess of Worcester, who entertained his king at Raglan, and lost the castle at the end of the First English Civil War.[26] William Wordsworth undertook the Wye Tour in 1798, composing Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey during his visit,[27] and Walter Savage Landor sought, unsuccessfully, to establish a landed estate at Llanthony Priory.[28] Archdeacon Coxe's record of his journey to Llanthony in the spring of 1799 provides an illustration of the hazards of travelling in Wales at this time: "I would not recommend timid persons to pass this way in a carriage, for in the whole course of my travels, I seldom met with one more inconvenient and unsafe".[29] In 1840, the Chartist leader John Frost and two colleagues were tried at the Shire Hall in Monmouth and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, the last such sentences to be passed in Britain.[note 2][30] A statue in front of the Shire Hall commemorates Charles Stewart Rolls, the aviator and entrepreneur who was the first Briton to be killed in a plane crash.[31]

The architecture of the county was first systematically covered by William Coxe in his two-volume, An Historical Tour in Monmouthshire, published in 1801.[note 3] Coxe's Preface explains the Tour's genesis; "The present work owes its origin to an accidental excursion in Monmouthshire, in company with my friend Sir Richard Hoare, during the autumn of 1798. I was struck with the picturesque ruins of ancient castles, and I was animated with the view of mansions distinguished by the residence of illustrious persons".[32] A detailed county history was undertaken by Sir Joseph Bradney, in his A History of Monmouthshire from the Coming of the Normans into Wales down to the Present Time; published in the early 20th century.[33] More recent studies include those of the architectural historian John Newman, in his Gwent/Monmouthshire volume of the Pevsner Buildings of Wales series; and, most exhaustively, by Sir Cyril Fox and Lord Raglan, in their three-volume study, Monmouthshire Houses.[34] The last was described by the architectural historian Peter Smith as "one of the most remarkable studies of vernacular architecture yet made in the British Isles,[35] a landmark, in its own field, as significant as Darwin's Origin of Species".[36]

Buildings

See also

External links

Click here to see an interactive OpenStreetMap with locations of all Grade I listed buildings, Monmouthshire-wide, for which coordinates are included in the list-articles linked above.

Notes

  1. ^ The British Listed Buildings online (BLBO) site records 54 listed buildings, as it has two entries for the Old Wye Bridge, Chepstow. It is not uncommon for bridges to have two listings when, as at Chepstow, one end of the bridge is in one country and the other in another. BLBO records the listing for the English end of the bridge (Entry 8, HE 1101561) as 'Chepstow Bridge', and the listing for the Welsh end (Entry 47, Cadw 2479) as 'Road Bridge over River Wye'.
  2. ^ The sentences were subsequently commuted to transportation for life.
  3. ^ An earlier history, authored by David Williams, a Welsh minister, was published in 1796.
  4. ^ Sometimes known as OSGB36, the grid reference is based on the British national grid reference system used by the Ordnance Survey.

References

  1. ^ Evans 1953, p. 29.
  2. ^ "Monmouthshire – History, Facts, & Points of Interest". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 30 July 2019.
  3. ^ "Labour Market Profile - Monmouthshire". Nomis. Office for National Statistics. Retrieved 12 September 2021.
  4. ^ "Clause 256 (Hansard, 20 July 1972)". api.parliament.uk. HMSO. Retrieved 30 July 2019.
  5. ^ "Local Government (Wales) Act 1994". UK Government. 1994. Retrieved 29 March 2023.
  6. ^ Clark 1979, p. 207.
  7. ^ Clark 1980, p. 42.
  8. ^ McCloy 2013, p. 126.
  9. ^ "Coflein". online database of RCAHMW. Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. Retrieved 28 November 2016.
  10. ^ "Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990". The National Archives. Retrieved 18 June 2013.
  11. ^ "Historic England – Listed Buildings". historicengland.org.uk. Retrieved 18 August 2019.
  12. ^ "Grade I Listed Buildings in Monmouthshire". British Listed Buildings Online. Retrieved 4 April 2019.
  13. ^ a b Jenkins 2008, p. 163.
  14. ^ Jenkins 2008, p. 169.
  15. ^ Jenkins 2008, p. 174.
  16. ^ Hayman 2016, p. 69.
  17. ^ Newman 2000, p. 120.
  18. ^ Tyerman & Warner 1951, p. 3.
  19. ^ Mitchell 2010, pp. 65–74.
  20. ^ Hando 1944, p. 15.
  21. ^ Hando 1951, p. 82.
  22. ^ Hando 1958, pp. 118–120.
  23. ^ Hando 1954, pp. 55–57.
  24. ^ Aslet 2005, p. 426.
  25. ^ Kenyon 2010, p. 67.
  26. ^ Clark 1953, p. 65.
  27. ^ "An introduction to 'Tintern Abbey'". The British Library. Retrieved 20 July 2019.
  28. ^ "Walter Savage Landor 1775 TO 1864". Brecon Beacons Parks Society. Retrieved 20 July 2019.
  29. ^ Coxe 1995b, p. 210.
  30. ^ Aslet 2005, pp. 427–428.
  31. ^ "Charles Rolls – The Life of the Motoring and Aviation Pioneer". www.rolls-royceandbentley.co.uk. Rolls-Royce. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  32. ^ Coxe 1995a, Preface.
  33. ^ Bradney 1991, preface.
  34. ^ Fox & Raglan 1994, preface.
  35. ^ Smith 1975, p. 7.
  36. ^ Newman 2000, p. 84.
  37. ^ Cadw. "Abbey Hotel (1940)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  38. ^ Cadw. "Abergavenny Castle (2376)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  39. ^ Cadw. "Court Farm Barn (1941)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  40. ^ Cadw. "Caldicot Castle (2006)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  41. ^ Cadw. "Castle House, Usk (2128)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  42. ^ Cadw. "Chepstow Castle (2475)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  43. ^ Cadw. "Church of St Aeddan, Bettws Newydd (1962)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  44. ^ Cadw. "Church of St Bridget, Skenfrith (2082)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  45. ^ Cadw. "Church of St Cadoc, Llangattock Lingoed (1955)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  46. ^ Cadw. "Church of St David, Llangeview (2711)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  47. ^ Cadw. "Church of St David, Llanthony (1938)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  48. ^ Cadw. "Church of St Jerome, Llangwm (2028)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  49. ^ Cadw. "Church of St John, Llandenny (17425)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  50. ^ Cadw. "Church of St Martin, Cwmyoy (1933)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  51. ^ Cadw. "Priory Church of St Mary, Abergavenny (2373)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  52. ^ Cadw. "Church of St Mary, Caldicot (2019)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  53. ^ Cadw. "Church of St Mary, Chepstow (2594)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  54. ^ Cadw. "Church of St Mary the Virgin, Llanfair Kilgeddin (2782)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  55. ^ Cadw. "Church of St Mary, Magor (2928)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  56. ^ Cadw. "Church of St Mary, Portskewett (2044)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  57. ^ Cadw. "Church of St Michael and All Angels, Gwernesney (2715)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  58. ^ Cadw. "Church of St. Nicholas, Grosmont (1947)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  59. ^ Cadw. "Church of St Nicholas, Trellech (2106)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  60. ^ Cadw. "Church of St Peter, St Paul and St John, Llantrisant (2718)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  61. ^ Cadw. "Church of St Teilo, Llantilio Crossenny (2073)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  62. ^ Cadw. "Church of St Teilo, Llantilio Pertholey (2002)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  63. ^ Cadw. "Church of St Tewdric, Mathern (2040)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  64. ^ Cadw. "Church of St Tysoi, Llansoy (2029)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  65. ^ Cadw. "Clytha Castle (1968)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  66. ^ Cadw. "Clytha Park (1966)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  67. ^ Cadw. "Cross at Croes Llwyd Farm, Raglan (24716)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  68. ^ Cadw. "Great Castle House (2217)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  69. ^ Cadw. "Grosmont Castle (1949)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  70. ^ Cadw. "Llanthony Priory (1939)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  71. ^ Cadw. "Llanvihangel Court (1919)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  72. ^ Cadw. "Stable Block at Llanvihangel Court (19288)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  73. ^ Cadw. "Llwyn-celyn Farmhouse (1937)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  74. ^ Cadw. "Mathern Palace (2007)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  75. ^ Cadw. "Monmouth Castle (2216)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  76. ^ Cadw. "Monnow Bridge (2218)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  77. ^ Cadw. "Pen-y-Clawdd Court (1926)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  78. ^ Cadw. "Penallt Old Church (2104)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  79. ^ Cadw. "Chepstow Port Wall (2477)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  80. ^ Cadw. "Church of St Mary, Usk (2123)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  81. ^ Cadw. "Priory Gatehouse (2126)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  82. ^ Cadw. "Raglan Castle (2101)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  83. ^ Cadw. "Old Wye Bridge (2479)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  84. ^ Cadw. "Shire Hall, Monmouth (2228)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  85. ^ Cadw. "Tintern Abbey (20437)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  86. ^ Cadw. "Chepstow Town Gate (2476)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  87. ^ Cadw. "Treowen House (2065)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  88. ^ Cadw. "Usk Castle (2127)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.
  89. ^ Cadw. "White Castle (2079)". National Historic Assets of Wales. Retrieved 19 July 2019.

Sources