RE-ENTRANCE OF SOUTH WALES--CRICKHOWELL--TRETOWER--BRECON CASTLE AND
PRIORY--ROAD TO LLANDOVERY--TRECASTLE--PASS OF CWM-DUR--LLANDOVERY
CASTLE--ROAD FROM BRECON TO HEREFORD--BRUNLYSS CASTLE--FEMALE
VENGEANCE--HAY--CLIFFORD CASTLE.
The road from Abergavenny to Brecon, bordering the clear and lively Usk
in a romantic valley, soon leaves the charming county of Monmouth; but is
attended with such a continuance of agreeable scenery as may diminish in
a considerable degree the regret of the tourist. Among the verdant
accompaniments of the serpentizing river, the rich groves and smiling
lawns of Dany Park are conspicuous, swelling above a fertile vale, and
backed by a range of wild mountains. Nearly opposite this, in a field to
the right of the road and the fifteen mile-stone from Brecon, is a single
upright stone, about fourteen feet high, conjectured to be a monument of
the druidical ages.
CRICKHOWELL, about two miles farther, is an old mean-built town; but,
hanging on the steep declivities of a fine hill, and dignified with the
picturesque ruin of a castle, it is an interesting object in the
approach. The extent of this fragment of antiquity (of obscure origin),
sometimes called Alashby Castle, is by no means considerable; the
foundation of the keep, seated on a high artificial mound, denotes much
original strength, and all the standing walls shew a very remote
erection; although a few enrichments of later times may be perceived
beneath the thickly-woven ivy. A narrow Gothic bridge crosses the Usk
here to the pleasing village of Langottoc, the neighbourhood of which is
enlivened with several handsome seats; but no one is more remarkable for
the excellence of its position and the singularity of its design than a
lately-erected residence of Admiral Gell's.
The road continues scenic and entertaining to the small village of
TRETOWER, only to be noticed for a few picturesque fragments of its
castle, once the residence of Mynarch lord of Brecon. Then winding round
a conical eminence, the road ascends a mighty hill called the Bwlch,
which term signifies a rent in a mountain: during which ascent, a farewel
view of the vale of the Usk, with a small tributary valley, and its
appendant stream descending from some gloomy mountains to the north, and
joining it near the castle of Tretower, is truly interesting and grand.
But from these wide-ranging views, and all external scenery, the tourist
becomes shut up on entering the pass of the mountains, a sterile hollow,
from which he emerges on a subject of an entirely opposite and very
singular description. Surrounded by dark mountains, melancholy and
waste, appears an extensive lake called LANGOR'S POOL, upwards of six
miles in circumference; which, as the natives assure you, is the site of
a large city swallowed up by an earthquake, and is so well furnished with
perch, tench, and eels, as to be one-third fish to two-thirds water.
In the neighbourhood of the lake north-eastward, and near the head of the
Lleveny brook, which empties itself into the pool, I find described the
ruins of BLAEN-LLEVENY CASTLE. It was fortified by Peter FitzHerbert,
descended of Bernard de Newmarch, lord of Brecon, according to the
opinion of some antiquaries, upon the site of the Roman Loventium.
The road soon descends to the fine vale of Brecon, grandly accompanied by
a semicircular range of mountains; where, proudly rising in superior
majesty, the Van rears its furrowed and bipartite summit high above the
clouds. Advancing, cultivation takes a more extensive sweep, and
picturesque disposition becomes frequent. The Usk flowing round the foot
of the Bwlch, cloathed with the extensive plantations of Buckland-house,
salutes the beholder with renewed attractions; and farther up the vale
laves the charming woody eminence of Peterstone in its sinuous career.
On the left of the road, about five miles from Brecon, is a stone pillar,
six feet in height, and nearly cylindrical; on which is an inscription
that Camden read, N--- FILIUS VICTORINI, but which is now almost
obliterated. He supposes it a monument of later ages than the Romans,
although inscribed with their characters, and wearing the general
appearance of a Roman _cippus_. In the parish of Llahn Hamwalch,
standing on the summit of a hill near the church, (which is to the left
of the road a little beyond the former monument) I find described St.
Iltut's hermitage, composed of four large flat stones; three of which,
standing upright, are surmounted by the fourth, so as to form a sort of
hut, eight feet long, four wide, and nearly the same in height. This
kind of monument is called a Kist-vaen, a variety of the Cromlech order,
and supposed to have been applied to the same purposes.
BRECON is delightfully situated upon a gentle swell above the Usk,
overlooking a fertile highly-cultivated valley enlivened with numerous
seats, and enriched with several sylvan knolls. On one side of the town,
beneath the majestic hanging groves of the priory, the impetuous Hondy
loudly murmurs, and unites with the Usk a small distance beyond its
handsome bridge. Though the town boasts many capital residences, yet,
encumbered by a number of mean hovels even in its principal situations,
and deficient in regulations of cleanliness, it fails to create any idea
of importance. Its once magnificent castle is now curtailed to a very
insignificant ruin; and that little is so choaked up with miserable
habitations, as to exhibit no token of antique grandeur: some broken
walls and a solitary tower compose its remains.
BRECON CASTLE was founded by Bernard de Newmarch in the reign of William
Rufus. Llewelyn prince of Wales besieged it when asserting the rights of
his ancestry and friends, but without success. Passing through the hands
of the Braoses and Bohuns, it fell to the king-making Buckingham, when it
became the seat of chivalric splendour. To his care Dr. Morton, bishop
of Ely, was committed by Richard the Third; and the remaining turret is
still called Ely tower by the natives, and described to have been his
prison. Buckingham, fired with resentment by the ingratitude of Richard,
whom he had raised to power, contrived, with his prisoner, in this place,
the means of his overthrow. The plot succeeded, but the duke was
betrayed and taken before its completion, and lost his head: the more
wary priest retired in secresy during its operation, and preserved his to
wear the metropolitan mitre in the ensuing reign. Bernard also founded a
Benedictine priory for six monks westward of the town; it was dedicated
to St. John, subordinate to Battle abbey in Sussex, and became collegiate
under Henry the Eighth. The church is a grand cruciform building, 200
feet in length by 60 in width, and has an embattled tower 90 feet high
rising from the centre of the building. A cloister extends from the
church to the priory-house; where the tourist, as he paces the refectory,
or great dining-room, may speculate on monkish carousals, where blue-eyed
nuns, were jovially toasted, and secret confessions anticipated.
But the most fascinating attraction of the town is its two delightful
walks: the one traced on the margin of the noble Usk; the other, called
the priory walk, a luxuriant grove impendent over the brawling Hondy,
once assigned to the meditations of monkish fraud, but now more happily
applied to the use of the townspeople, and enlivened on fine evenings by
a brilliant promenade of Cambrian beauties.
This town, built on the site of a Roman station, {330} was originally
called Aber-Hondy. After the departure of the Romans, the lordship of
Brecon remained in the hands of the Britons till the reign of William
Rufus; when Bernard de Newmarch, a Norman baron of great skill and
prowess, having assembled a large body of troops, made a successful
inroad into the country, killed the British chief Bledhyn ap Maenyrch,
and retailed his son prisoner in Brecon castle during his life; though
he, at the same time, allowed him a nominal share of his father's
territories. He then fortified the town with a castle, and an encircling
wall, having three gates; and further strengthened his cause by taking to
wife Nesta, grand-daughter of Gruffyth prince of Wales.
A road passing from Brecon through Llandovery to Llandilo, in
Caermarthenshire, we did not travel; but find it described as highly
picturesque, and otherwise interesting. For several miles it traverses
an undulating district enlivened by the Usk; which now, approaching its
source in the Trecastle hills, assumes all the impetuosity of a mountain
torrent. The spacious lawns, long avenues of trees, and extensive
plantations of Penbont, grace the bonders of the stream about three miles
from Brecon; and on the left of the road, a small distance further,
appear the trifling remains of Davenock castle. TRECASTLE, ten miles
from Brecon, a small village but possessing a good inn, is deprived of
every vestige of its ancient fortification. From this place the road
winds for nine miles to Llandovery, in a deep valley, between the
mountains, called CWM-DWR, a romantic pass watered by a lively stream,
and dotted with numerous cottages, whose fertile hollow is beautifully
contrasted by the wild aspect of the impendent heights. LLANDOVERY is a
small irregular town, nearly encompassed by rivulets, and only to be
noticed by the picturesque traveller for the small ruins of its
ivy-mantled castle. The road then continues to Llandilo on a high
terrace, ornamented on the right by the groves of Taliaris and Abermarle
parks, and overlooking the upper vale of Towey, rich in cultivation and
the beauty of its stream.
On the road to Hereford from Brecon, about seven miles, is BRUNLYSS
CASTLE; the principal and almost only feature of which is a high round
tower on an artificial mount. Its foundation is uncertain, but cannot be
later than the first settlement of the Normans in the county. There is a
curious circumstance connected with an incident in the history of this
castle, which I think very probably suggested the character of
Faulconbridge in Shakespeare's play of King John. The acknowledged son
and heir of Bernard de Newmarch and his wife Nesta was Mahel, a
dauntless, youth, who, after the death of Bernard, having affronted a
paramour of his mother's, and upbraided the matron herself, became in a
most extraordinary manner deprived of his inheritance. Nesta, enraged at
the interference of her son in her tender arrangements, presented herself
before Henry the Second, and solemnly made oath that he was not the son
of Bernard lord of Breton; but was begotten by a Cambrian warrior,
thereby proclaiming her son a bastard, and satisfying her revenge, though
at the expence of every maternal tie and of the strongest sentiments of
female worth. Bernard's estates, in consequence, fell to his daughter
Sibyl wife of Milo earl of Hereford; and Mahel, ejected from his
patrimony, became a lawless desperado. Once, as he was on a predatory
excursion over the domains of David Fitzgerald, bishop of St. David's, he
was entertained by Walter de Clifford in Brunlyss Castle for one night;
when the building took fire, and he, in endeavouring to escape, was
crushed to death by the falling of a stone.
HAY, a small populous town on this road, at the extremity of the
principality, occupies an eminence near the banks of the Wye, and was
formerly graced with a fine castle, which is now reduced to a few broken
walls; but CLIFFORD, a mile or two further, on the upper road to
Hereford, still exhibits the majestic remains of its castle, crowning a
bold hill which towers above the river, and has been long renowned as
having been the birth-place of the lovely, but frail fair Rosamond.