Chepstow, the town

This is a story about how my style of travel leads to finding the good stuff. 

Chepstow ended up being the place with engrained history, like dirt under the fingernails. Other than the castle, there was so much of so little importance that it became difficult to find a photo to define the place. 

I had planned to go to Bristol, but my source of Bristol info had her own stuff to do, and so with the planned date of travel approaching, I decided to see what else was available in the area. So I went on the internet, not exactly surfing, more like bobbing with the tine in a random fashion. I found a random, history youtube thing on Chepstow.

Hmmm, just my sort of thing, and in my target area.  A bit more looking and it sounds like fun, or at least a not bad way to spend a weekend.

I have never used air bnb myself. Yeah I have stayed in a few, but I have never done the actual booking, so I pressed Chava into service. And as luck would have it she found the perfect place for me. My host was lovely, and in a location that managed to be both quiet and centrally located. Susan was a  lovely host. 

I arrived on Thursday. Walked all around town. Planning my Friday, everyone I asked said to go to Tintern Abbey, so I took the bus.  It was about a block from Susan's and was so easy.  I had a bit of concern that I did not have the right change, the cashpoints (ATM to you Americans) gives out 20s. I was hoping that there would be an open shop for be to buy something so I would have change, but the busses all take cards. And thanks to the driver I got a day ticket rather than a round trip. They cost the same, but the day trip had more options.

 This is what the UK looks like in many places. New on top of old. Scaffolding for projects in many stages of the work.  This may be there for years. 

The nifty part of the day pass on the bus is that I could get off at random places where I would find cool small stuff, like this iron fountain. Not an important monument, but a historic foot note of the role that this area had in creating all of the iron work that marks the UK. 

       

But this post is about my walk around the town of Chepstow. Odd little place that it is. It has been different things at different times.  Once the main focus of the area,  Castles tend to do that to a town. Later a center of shipping and trade, but Bristol took that role later on. During the early part of the industrial revolution, Chepstow was the key point for materials and goods going up and down the Wye river. For the Victorians, and to some extent the Edwardians, it was a tourist destination. Now it is one end of what used to be the main bridge to Bristol.  So now it is layered with history, built over, preserved and ignored. And utterly delightful.

My airbnb was up this street. The Tutor timber frame on the left, and the tacky 60s remodel of an older building on the right.  What you don't see from this picture is that this is the main road that goes up to Tintern and then on to Monmouth. Yep, the one the big old bus goes up.

This is two views of the old town gate. The buildings just sort of absorb the old gate.  To the right and the left of the gate are the old port wall. You can't see it from here as it has been absorbed into newer buildings, and the buildings built on top of those buildings.  

You see the wall occasionally at the edge of modernity, like in this little square.

This is looking down the hill. The thing to note here is what is set into the  sidewalk. Quotes, historic notes, impressions of the seals of local houses and businesses.

This is St Mary's Priory Church.

I walked by it on the first day. I went back later on the recommendation of Susan, my airbnb host. 

   The stone work here is extra cool.  I am guessing that the  large numbers of high end stone masons for the castle and nearby Tintern Abby made skilled masons available for what was just the town church. You will see more of this stone cut in my next blog about the castle.

It was built about the same time as Tintern Abbey. It was the religious place for the average people that lived and worked in the town part of Chepstow. 

This is the part of history that I relish.  The average person, the working bloke, the mother of the house. These were the places for them.

This little row of  houses faces on the churchyard (the wall you see on the right.) It is not a historic preservation district, just a row of old houses. They have just been here a really long time.

  There is an unexpected kind of religion practiced in this part of the world. Accustomed to the heavy handed Christianity I am exposed to, this is a sort of activist spirituality that I find appealing. If I were of that faith, I would find it comfortable.

  I don't ask for anything for me on this blog.  But I will ask if you want to contribute, please think about sending a dollar or two. (I have a note in to them, but for now their email is chepstowprioryfriends@gmail.com)

You see there are not big government funds to support the maintenance of these small treasures. 

 There are lots of Annes and Elizabeths from the Tudor period.  This story is an interesting one. 

     

This is an ancient church, but it is also a center for current, everyday Christian practice. 

The blue sign above does not say this is a place for this denomination or religion. It is a place for quite reflection.

 Precisely because the smaller churches were unimportant and directly run by the locals and did not have the big piles of expensive stuff, they got ignored in the anti Catholic mobs. You do not see the kind of destruction wrecked on Tintern Abbey. See how this stonework is the same kind of shape as at Tintern Abbey.

 All over town there are markers, plaques, and historical notes. I found lots of copies of this Town Trail. I think that some of my best intown walks are from these odd little local fliers. 

    One example is this marker set into the sidewalk, at the base of this walkway that goes up to the car park.  The aqua building on the left is one that you would never stop to look at. But walking up there, there is a door and a window that dates from probably the 1400s. 

  

This place was substantial in maritime history. This is the mouth of the River Wye.

That nondescript hole in the wall is history. The Gloucester Hole. It can only be accessed at extreme high tide. There is a large room cut into the rock over there. It has been used for storing tea, explosives, and a bunch of other stuff. The word "pirates" often shows up in tales about it.

Another weird thing is that there is a Union Jack painted below to the right, but it didn't show up on any of my photos. And as I look at other photos of the Hole, many do not show the flag.

Viewing it from over here, you can see the houses above the Hole on the cliff. 

The dark stone under the hole show high tide mark.  Tide range is 14 meters, that is 46 feet. That is a lot of water moving in and out, twice a day.

That is England over there.  I am standing in Wales. With a lot of dangerous water between the two. The strategic value of Chepstow starts to show. 

This is taken just a few yards up from the last photo. 

The bridge was one of the early iron bridges. If you read my blog on Tintern town, you might remember the bit about the early iron industry. 

So this bridge was one of the first across this dangerous bit of water, connecting England and Wales.

I started seeing these laminated signs on some of the benches. An invittion to conversation.

  

 

There is such a casual attitude to something so old and formative. Most people are hardly aware of it in there everyday lives.

This is something I see in places trying to achieve an ecofriendly balance.  This is a bee house. Not a hive for the large colony bees, but a place to encourage solitary bees, the ones that do a majority of the pollination going on in this area.