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Hidden gems


By Naylor Firth M


uch of the high ground in east and south east


Monmouthshire is covered with a thin ‘tablecloth’ of a very hard rock, locally called pudding-stone, which has protected the softer beds beneath from erosion. The rock was deposited


in an active delta about 390 million years ago and consists of a mass of rounded whitish quartz pebbles cemented together by sand grains. Examples can be seen


in the Buckstone, on the summit of the Kymin, in forestry land at the top of the Whitebrook valley, at Devauden and as far west as Parc Seymour. The geological name


for the rock is quartz conglomerate and its hardness and resistance to weathering has lead to its use in the past as a building stone for houses and barns and especially in dry stone walling. Numerous examples can


be seen on the high ground between Monmouth and Itton – Trellech contains some particularly fi ne examples where the three monoliths of Harold’s Stones are made of the conglomerate. In the earlier 19th century


a number of small quarries were operating in the Penallt area to produce millstones from the conglomerate and it has been estimated that about 5,000 were produced indicating a production rate of one every four days. With the limited number


of tools available in the early 19th century, the quarrying and making of these millstones must have been an incredibly hard operation. They were fashioned with one side fl at and the other side curved, with a hole in the middle to fi t a wooden shaft. These very heavy items


would have been mainly transported by river and several worn paths can be seen between the small quarries and the riverbank opposite Redbrook. Under low water


conditions in the Wye a number of completed millstones can be seen on the river bed, doubtless accidentally spilt during loading onto the trows to the accompaniment of a few expletives. The fi nished millstones


were used for grinding corn but their main application in south east Wales and Severnside was for crushing apples to produce cider. An excellent example of a


local cider-apple crusher base stone or ‘chase’ can be seen in front of the Anchor Hotel in Tintern and a number of millstones have been preserved in gardens in the Wye Valley. This small local industry


died out towards the end of the 19th century as new materials and new technologies took over.


Top: View of the recreation ground in Chepstow in the early 1900s. From Chepstow and The River Wye from the collections of Chepstow Museum Above: A gigantic whale which was washed ashore at Sudbrook in 1925. From Caldicot and the Villages of the Moor by Malcolm D Jones


A LOOK BACK IN TIME...


Above: The main road, Gilwern, in 1965. From Around Gilwern by David Edge Right: The Abergavenny and District Co-operative Stores in 1925. From Abergavenny Past and Present by I M Morgan


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