Presteigne Poor Law Union, Radnorshire

A view of Chepstow and the River Wye circa 1865.

Chepstow, a town, a parish, a sub-district, and a district in Monmouth. The town stands on the verge of the county, on the river Wye, adjacent to the South Wales railway, 3 miles N by W of the Wye’s influx to the Severn, and 15 by road, but 17 ¼ by railway, E by N of Newport. It dates from at least the Saxon times; and has been supposed, though without any good evidence, to have risen from the ruins of a Roman station. Its site is the slope of a hill among lofty cliffs; and must have been esteemed, in early times, a favourable position for military works. A great castle was built here by Fitz-Osborne, Earl of Hereford, immediately after the Conquest; is mentioned in the Domesday book as Castellum de Estrighoiel; passed to the Clares, the Bigods, the Herberts, and the Somersets; underwent great extensions and renovations in the times of the first three Edwards; made a great figure in the civil wars of Charles I.; was the prison, for twenty years, of Henry Marten the regicide;. and still exists in tolerable preservation. It crowns a crag, falling precipitously to the Wye, and separated by a deep dingle from the town; it covers about 3 acres, in parallelogramic plan, long and narrow; it consists of entrance-gate, four courts, and a central building; it retains portions of the original structure of Fitz-Osborne, but is chiefly of later dates;, and it includes an interesting Norman edifice, 90 feet by 30, thought by some to have been a chapel, and containing some Roman bricks in its masonry. Walls were constructed around the town about the same time at which the castle was built; and were afterwards renovated and strengthened; and some portions of them, including small round bastions and an entire gate, yet remain.

BUILTH PETTY SESSIONS.—MONDAY. [Before THOMAS THOMAS, ESQ., Chairman, REV, DANIEL EVANS, and…