Moolhope Naturalists' Field Club.

JULY 10TH, 1885.

ABERGAVENNY THE SUGAR LOAF MOUNTAIN ; THE ANCIENT MONUMENTS IN PRIORY CHURCH; AND THE CASTLE GROUNDS.

“Mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery."

RUSKIN." The true and beautiful."

THE Ladies' Day of the Woolhope Club has passed off very successfully. Lovely weather, a tempting programme, and the widespread interest in the pursuits of the Club, brought together a goodly company, and all went well. The following ladies and gentlemen took part in the day's proceedings :-The President, Mr. C. G. Martin; Sir Herbert Croft, Bart.; Mr. G. H. Piper, F.G.S.; Dr. Bull, Mr. Ernest Bull, Miss Bull, and Miss Leila Bull; Miss Edith and Miss Beatrice Symonds; the Rev. F. T. Havergal; Mrs E. E. Edwards and Miss Bayliss ; Dr. S. R. Matthews; the Rev. Prebendary Bury Capel; the Revs. W. BagnallOakeley and Mrs. Bagnall-Oakeley, W. Bowell, G. H. Clay, J. Davies, E. A. Ely, W. Elliot, J. E. Grasett and Miss Grasett, Michael Hopton and Mrs. Hopton, A. W. Horton and Mrs. Horton, R. W. Hunt, A. G. Jones and Miss Jones, H. B. D. Marshall and Mrs. Marshall, V. T. T. Orgill, Mrs. Long and Miss Lewis, D. Price, J. R. Reece, W. R. Shepherd and Mrs. Shepherd, T. A. Stoodley, R. H. Williams, Mrs. Woodhouse, Miss and Miss E. D. Woodhouse; Capt. and Mrs. Noyes; Messrs. F. Bainbridge and Miss C. Bainbridge, E. J. Baker and Miss Mackenzie, H. C. Beddoe, Alfred and Miss Kate Beddoe, F. Billiald, Miss Harding and Miss Lee, C. P. Bird and Miss J. Cole, J. Carless, Miss Carless and Miss E. Carless, Robert Clarke, Gilbert Davies, Hubert Davies and Richard Davies, Charles Fortey, J. T. Owen Fowler and Mrs. Fowler, J. Greaves, Miss Ida Lay, Miss Clara Raymond and Miss Elizabeth Smith, A. A. Hancocks, Mrs. and Miss Hancocks, T. Hutchinson and Mrs. Hutchinson, F. L. Jones, Arthur Levason, Mrs. Levason, Miss Levason and Miss Blackburn, T. Llanwarne, J. W. Lloyd and Miss Lloyd, H. C. Moore, Mrs. Baker and Miss Rhind, J. Griffith Morris, H. Nesbitt, Miss Nesbitt and Miss E. Nesbitt, T. C. Paris, Elmes Y. Steele, Mrs. Elmes Steele and Miss J. Steele, H. Southall and Burton Watkins, and Mr. Theophilus Lane, the secretary, with some few others whose names did not transpire.

The town of Abergavenny in itself is full of interest. It stands at the junction

of the little river Gavenny, or Kenvy as it is called, with the river Usk, and thus gets its name. It is a bright and pleasant town, and its situation is excellent. It has the Pen-y-Vale hills to the north-as that range of the Black Mountains is called the massive Blorenge to the west, the Scyrrid Mountains to the east, and before it, the opening valley of the Usk. It has considerable remains of its Castle and town walls, its Priory and Priory Church, with so fine a series of monumental effigies as to delight the heart of an archæologist. It has, moreover a history that few towns can equal, and more ancient than all these remains. Its existence, indeed, is prehistoric, for tradition tells of a British town and fortress before the Romans came. That Abergavenny was the Roman station Gobannium is beyond doubt; for though it seems that but few Roman remains have been found, its name and locality are clearly pointed out in the 12th journey of Antonine from Silurum (Caerleon) to Uriconium (Wroxeter), called by Sir Richard Colt Hoare the Via Orientalis of Antonine. The distance from Burrium (Usk) to Gobannium (Abergavenny) is there marked 12 miles; and from Gobannium to Magnis (Kenchester, five miles from Hereford,) the distance is 22 miles. There exists here also very curious evidence of the Roman occupation of Abergavenny and its district, in the names of two neighbouring villages. The parish of Llanwenarth is divided by the river Usk, and the portion on the left bank of the river, nearest to Abergavenny, still bears the distinctive Roman appellation Llanwenarth citra, whilst the portion of the parish on the far side of the river retains the name of Llanwenarth ultra. The parish of Llandeilo Bertholly, similarly divided by the river Gavenny, has also its two portions distinguished by the same Latin terms, citra and ultra.

Abergavenny was one of the early baronies created after the Norman Conquest. Hameline, the son of Dru de Baladun, or Belun, one of the great Norman chieftains, is stated to have subdued Overwent, and to have built a fortress at Abergavenny, and founded there a Priory of Benedictine monks. He died without issue in 1090, and left the Castle to his nephew Brien de Wallingford, or de l'Isle. This gives the date of the first building of the castle, and the foundation of the priory, and here may be said to begin the real history of Abergavenny. It becomes more clear in the lives and deeds of the great lords and barons represented by the effigies in the church, but it would require a volume to enter into it. At the present time we will only add that, like all other history, it is made up of a tissue of successes and reverses, and that the spirit of its residents has ever been marked by a sturdy independence that has borne the one and the other with equanimity.

Abergavenny three centuries since was perhaps a place of greater trade and importance than it is at the present time. Leland called it "a faire waulled town, meately well inhabited." It was a corporate town, too, up to the beginning of the reign of William III. (c. 1690), when the charter was forfeited in consequence of the disaffection of its inhabitants to the new Government, as shown by violent tumults at the election of a bailiff. From this time it began to decline in importance. Its inhabitants took up successively and successfully the manufacture of flannel, of longcloth, and of shoes; but as roads opened up the country, and

machinery became more used, these efforts failed.

An Abergavenny genius discovered a method of bleaching hair, which enriched the place, so long as the enormous periwigs remained in fashion, for Abergavenny wigs became quite the fashion, and were worth from £40 to £50 each; but that went by. Then the beauty of the scenery and the mildness and salubrity of the air were widely proclaimed, and consumptive patients were invited there to get cured by drinking goat's whey, but the road was weary, and patients ceased to come. The ironworks in the district gave the next important help to the trade of the town, and very prosperous they made it, but after some years that source failed, and is now being happily compensated for by increased railway facilities and railway works—a population of some 2,000 has thus become nearly 8,000 within the present century, and visitors find it a cheerful thriving town, with new buildings, new streets, new houses, or fresh planted sites for them on all sides.

The Woolhope Club brought their fair visitors to the Brecon Road Station for the ascent of the Sugar-Loaf. Here carriages and a few ponies were waiting for those who wished for such help, but the majority set off on foot for the mountain. Dry and tedious are the beginnings of all great undertakings, and the first mile or two of roads and lanes to the foot of the Rholben were hot, and dusty too. By the side of the lane leading up to it was a very remarkable laurel. It was no longer a shrub but a veritable tree, whose stem at 5 feet from the ground measured 4ft. 11in. in circumference, and afterwards divided into two trunks. It might fairly be adduced as practical evidence of the general mildness of the climate there.

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The steep grassy slopes of the Rholben offered by no means an easy ascent," for the dry weather had made the grass very slippery, and the seats, so considerately placed there, were very welcome resting places to enjoy a few strawberries, and meditate on the grandeur of the Blorenge, with its broad bare summit, and its sides so richly clothed with timber. It forms a fine background to the town over which it seems to hang. Another scramble, and at another seat the little Scyrrid comes well into view, on whose slopes are the fields which William de Braos granted to Talley Abbey in Carmarthenshire, and strawberries again were very refreshing. The walking now becomes easy and pleasant, the mountain air invigorating, and the views on every side fine. The mountain to the east, which gives such character to the Abergavenny scenery by its rugged bipartite top, is the Great Scyrrid, Scyrrid Fawr, or Holy Mountain.

There was formerly at the top of this hill a Roman Catholic Chapel, dedicated to St. Michael, a patron saint of sailors, of which a few vestiges still remain. The remembrance of the site, however, is preserved by a hollow space, said to be formed by superstitious devotees, who resorting here on Michaelmas Eve, carry away the soil to strew over the graves of their friends. The religious veneration