Welsh beat woman. Mayhem in Newport. 918 AD

Athelflaed once came to Newport, but it wasn’t a happy experience. She was the daughter of Alfred the Great and married to the King of Mercia who was facing some problems. Lucky he had Athelflaed as his wife!

The Vikings were attacking his kingdom from the North, and the Welsh, taking advantage of this, decided to attack his southern possessions. The Welsh leader, Owain of Brecon, was soundly trounced by the Saxons, who unfortunately didn’t know when to leave well enough alone, and marched deep into South Wales.

On their way home they were ambushed in the marshlands of what is now Clarence Place. The Welsh attacked as the Saxons were crossing the ford where Newport Bridge now stands. The battle was savage but ultimately the Welsh prince, Morgan (he of Glamorgan) won, and the remaining Saxons were taken prisoner. To their surprise the Welsh discovered the Saxons had been led by a woman, Athelflaed. Chivalrous or embarrassed, the Welsh released her along with the surviving Saxons, some of whom were allowed to settle on the western bank of the Usk ford.

Athelflaed was less lucky. She died in Tamworth that same year, showing that some places are even less lucky than Newport.



Newport Bridge heading into Clarence Place










Those Saxons who stayed built a mill at the present junction of Mill St. and Shaftsbury St - which operated for the next thousand years. A little higher up, where Mill St. meets Queen’s Hill, the Saxons built their geldenhall. The area between there and today’s Civic Centre is still known as Goldtops from the time when gild or geld was names given to settlements that paid tax to a manorial lord.

The area connecting Goldtops to Mill St. is presently known as Pentonville. A thousand years ago or more it might well have been known as Pyndanvil, coming from the Saxon word Pyndan for a dam on a mill stream, and vil, meaning a small collection of houses.

Well, it took an army led by a woman and a sneaky Welsh ambush, but Newport had at last the germ of a settlement in its swamp…and it was…err…Saxon, not Welsh.





Mill Street is just to the left of the river above Queensway

A less sexy Athelflaed

A surfeit of saints

Just down the road from Monmouth is the small village of Dingestow, reputedly named after the obscure Celtic Saint, Dingat, who was the son of another celtic saint, King Brychan.

Some people breed dogs, King Brychan bred saints – twenty four sons and twenty four daughters, all of them saints. Presumably St. Augustine was sent over from Rome (in 595) to regularize the system before the celestial court began speaking Welsh.

And we are not talking about Mother Teresa here. King Brychan, overcome by lust took his first wife by force. He may have been gentler with the two that followed. When not procreating or contemplating God, Brychan pursued his enemies with a vengeance, as the King of Dyfed found out to his cost. In retaliation for a raid on his kingdom, Brychan led his men in a ferocious counter-attack, after which the dismembered limbs of the slaughtered were collected as trophies.

One can only imagine what happened when his daughter Gwladys was abducted by king Gwynllyw of Gwynllwg. He may have appreciated the alliteration, may perhaps have remembered how he acquired his own first wife. He may even have wondered how a saint should respond before launching his armies on what is now Newport.

St. Gwynllyw or, to give him his proper title, St. Gwynllyw Farfog (the bearded or possibly warrior) was in trouble. His capital, probably a small hill fort on top of Stow Hill, was about to face the full wrath of St Brychan. Fortunately King Arthur, not a saint, but High King of Britain, intervened and the two kings were reconciled, though it is reputed that Arthur himself was so struck by Gwladys, he considered taking her himself.

St. Gwynllyw was a bit of a lad. Some people on the birth of a son crack open the champagne. Gwynllyw went on a wild celebratory raid across Gwent and brought back… a cow from St. Tathyw of Caerwent.

He got more than he bargained for. St Tathyw came a calling, demanding his cow back. ‘Not unless you baptize my son a Christian,’ retorted Gwynllyw, a strange bargaining position though his wife was probably moving his lips. By this time the king was going soft, which is to be expected when you marry the daughter of a saint. It was probably a forgone conclusion that he would be converted to Christianity by his own son – St. Cadoc. And just to settle the matter, when St. Gwladys died he married her sister, St Ceingar, and would you know it, they had a son – St Cynidr of Glasbury.

The king died on the 29th of March 523 AD and was buried in the church which still bears his name, the anglicized St. Woolos on the top of Stow Hill.

Since then, saint-hood in the Newport vicinity seems to have dried up.

Pagans don't have martyrs

The Roman empire embraced Christianity in 323 AD but before then Christians had been persecuted and tortured. In 303 AD a large group of Christians were worshipping quietly in Caerleon. Roman soldiers arrested them but when they found the local prison was too small to hold them they decided to kill them instead. The terrified Christians were chased halfway to Newport all the time being hacked to pieces and drenching the road with their blood. Two of these Christians were St. Julius and St. Aaron, early victims of inadequate prisons.
Clearly an excitable bunch, the Silurians, and they haven’t changed much. Mind you the church got its own back a few decades later when Britain enjoyed ‘enforced’ Christianity under later emperors. Trouble is pagans don’t have martyrs.

But getting back to Newport.

Gwynllliw was both king and pirate. He kept a fast ship in narrow pill near the mouth of the River Usk. With his gang of cut-throats he would attack any defenceless ship that sailed too close. This "Pill of Gwynlliw " eventually became known as Pillgwenlly. It's believed Gwynlliw lived on the top of Stow hill. From there he could see from a distance rich cargo ships sailing towards the Usk. He would then race down what is now Bellevue lane, across the marshy Mendalgief to his pirate ship in Pill.






















He was married to a saint and surrounded by marsh






















Which ever way he looked.

























Enough to make you crazy.



One day he saw an angel a little like this one. (Then again may be not)























Who told him to walk to the top of a nearby hill where he would find a white ox with a black spot between its horns. There he was to build a church and live a holy life.

Maybe he wasn't crazy. Maybe angels like a laugh

For lo and behold he found that white ox with a black spot between its horns
and built a church on the spot.













The next post may well be titled a Mafia of Saints, or perhaps, less controversially, a surfeit of saints.
All the marsh photos are by courtesy of Andy Southwales.

Nobody wanted to live in Newport

I once stood in a garden of a modern house in St Brides. It was part of a small housing estate built upon what were once 'wetlands'. A heavy lorry passed and the ground quivered. It was like standing on blancmange, grass covered jelly. It set me thinking about how Newport 'began'.

As early as 6000 BC Mesolithic tribes hunted throughout the marsh, but permanent settlements were made on higher ground. The hill fort on the Gaer for example once overlooked dense forest and a salmon rich River Ebbw. Now it sniffs over a housing estate, a motorway, and a small polluted trickle. But in the marsh itself there was no settlement. The future Newport was a grim, diseased-ridden swamp in a dangerous and whimsical flood plain.











The Silurians ruled an area that stretched from West Glamorgan to Gwent. Other than the hill fort of Gaer overlooking the swamp, they avoided ‘Newport’, their major settlement in the area being Lodge Hill in Caerleon. According to Geoffrey of Monmouth it was founded in 406BC by a Silurian king called Belinus.(see Catherine Fisher)

Then the Romans came. They’d drained the Pontine Marshes but clearly didn’t think ‘Newport’ worth the effort, settling in Caerleon instead. After 25 years of hard fighting the Silurians were subjugated, their hill fort replaced by a huge military base, one of the largest in Britain. The only apparent value of what is now Newport was the river that ran through it - the Usk - which carried trade inland.















For a short but vivid history of Newport go here

Many thanks go to Andy South Wales for his photos of the Wetlands. He has a superb collection and his contact is atomicandy@atomicandy.f9.co.uk

What emerged from the marsh

The Transporter Bridge, one of only two in Britain. It's a prominent landmark in 'Lucy Silver'









It is behind and around The King's Head that 'Mr Nousel's Mirror' is set. It also figures in 'Lucy Silver'. Perhaps more important for many is that Van Morrison is a sleeping partner in the hotel, and has often performed there without fuss or ceremony. Mind you, so has Oasis.


























Newport Castle, built by the Normans, turned into brewery by the Victorians. Inhabited now by goths.

















Newport is a dark and magical place. I often say it, sometimes including the word ‘seedy’. These few pictures sum it up. I’ll leave you to decide which you’d label, dark, magical and seedy. What needs to be remembered however is that all of this was once marsh, and to marsh it may one day return.

The next posting will deal with aspects of Newport's history, along with some superb photos from Andy of South Wales.

Elegy to a cat

When I bought 381 Pilton Vale it came without carpets and curtains. The sellers had even removed the light-bulbs. But it was a happy moment. My first house. Those I’d bought it from had paid only £3,500 for it. (So they could have afforded to throw in the light bulbs) I paid, £10,500 for it, and soon after that the property market exploded, carrying me up with it. It was like surfing on money.

Still, it didn’t seem like it that first night, walking on bare concrete and chip-board floors with a candle in my hand. Neighbours must have thought Quasimodo had just moved in, or Wee Willie Winkie.

Stuart and Jennie next door came to my rescue with the gift of a coffee table and a very old black couch. As Stuart said, ‘you have to start somewhere…everything gets better given time’. He was a gentle and dry philosopher was Stuart.

And it did get better.

Somebody gave me a tiny grey kitten. It was small enough to fit in the palm of my hand and stared up at me, a ball of fluff with wondering eyes. The kitten, not me.

I called it Gladstone.

It seemed to me that something so small demanded a weighty name. We sat most nights on a rocking chair watching TV until it was time for bed. Gladstone slept in the hallway at the foot of the stairs.

When I came home at night I was forced to open the door slowly, inch by inch, because Gladstone, eager to see me (and be fed) was pressed against the other side, and didn’t have the brain to move.

Every night followed a similar pattern. We watched some great TV together, and I got used to the smell of cat-food. But Gladstone resented being left downstairs.

In bed, I’d hear a desperate scrabbling, then a bump; more scrabbling and a final bump. In the morning I’d find him splayed out on the second step of the stairs.
As the days passed he made it to the fourth, and then the fifth. Sometimes he’d wake up in the early morning and make it to another step before passing out.

One Saturday morning, pondering as to whether to sleep in for another hour or two, I heard a desperate scrabbling and a thump that seemed very close. He’d made it to the landing. I was sure of it. A moment or two later the bedroom door creaked open. I lay there, content. Gladstone had climbed the Matterhorn. What character. True grit! But wait, he hadn’t finished.

The scrabbling continued and stopped just below the bed. Part leap - part abseiling -claws raking duvet, Gladstone made the final ascent and landed on the bed.

His triumph and mine were short-lived. The effort proved too much for him and he pissed on the bedding. I grabbed him – still a neat fit in the hand – and went to hurl him off the bed. But he looked so happy, so pleased with himself; he stayed. I went downstairs and made some porridge.

Gladstone was a favourite with the children next door, who played with him in the garden when I wasn’t there. One day Gladstone vanished. Shane and Michelle scoured Pilton Vale, knocking from door to door and, to my great astonishment, Gladstone was found.

He’d been discovered coated in mud on the river bank, as though somebody had thrown him there. The poor thing was shivering but he was dry,hot to the touch, as though burning up.

I had no telephone, didn’t know where to find a vet, so that night I knocked the local doctor out from his bed and confronted him with my feverish cat.

The doctor, a gentle man close to retirement, treated Gladstone as though he was treating a child, and I left, fairly hopeful, with some tablets and a prescription for more. Unfortunately my kitten never made it to cat. The following day Gladstone died.

It was winter, icy, the ground rock hard and I didn’t then possess a shovel or spade. Every so often I looked at him. He lay stiff as a board, a tiny grey streak on the kitchen floor. I didn’t want to touch him, didn’t know what to do.

Eventually I put on my coat and walked out into a freezing cold night. A lane took me close to the river and a dense bank of nettles. I looked at him one last time, this cat that had once climbed the Matterhorn, and tossed him into the nettles. I cried.

The Scottish Midge

The moon was once as smooth as a snooker ball until the Scottish midge arrived and set to work.

1976 was one of the great British summers. It is still talked about today, like Biblical Jews might have talked about the parting of the Red Sea many years after the event.

We were on the Isle of Skye at the very peak of the heat-wave and took it upon ourselves to climb what looked an accessible mountain. It may have been the Quiraing, I'm not too sure.

Several times we thought we’d reached the top, only to discover that it was merely a ridge and, invisible from the ground, lurked another elevation, followed in turn by another.

As we climbed we longingly looked below at these tiny locheens. They shone clear and blue, like turquoise chips scattered amidst the dry yellow grass. On the fourth ridge, we gave up and all but ran down, skidding on scree in great clouds of dust.
















We stopped at the first locheen, looking as blue up close as it had from a distance. The midges looked less blue – a swarm of agitated specks homing in on us fast. We ripped off our clothes – not fast enough – and plunged into ice cold water until only our nose and eyeball showed above water.

It was one of the great experiences, along with that peculiar smugness that evolution and a superior brain had enabled us to outwit the midge. They hummed above the surface as we cooled down in crystal water, our flesh for the moment impregnable. Disgruntled midges, we sneered at them.

I realized something was wrong when my legs turned blue. Then I realized I couldn’t feel them, and that my teeth were chattering like small castanets. The midges were gloating, their victory dance an aerial jeer.

I lumbered out from the water, aware that brain size wasn’t everything, that evolution had flaws and that a thousand midges were diving towards me. Disgruntled midges are not to be trifled with, a thousand of them... Drying was a luxury we didn’t have time for. We were under attack. But dragging clothes over dripping wet bodies was no short cut. Fabric stuck to flesh like backing tape, normally docile clothing just point-blank refusing to cooperate. They had turned into a fifth column, the enemy within (or without) colluding with the midge until our snooker smooth bodies were cratered more deeply than the moon.
The midges of Scotland did for the Romans, and I understood why.