SUDBROOK A PORTSKEWETT TRAILS THROUGH THE AGES LLWYBRAU TRWY’R OESOEDD Essential Information: The Countryside Code: Respect - Protect - Enjoy SUDBROOK & For local visitor information and details of accommodation call • Be Safe - plan ahead and follow any signs PORTSKEWETT Chepstow Tourist Information Centre on 01291 623772 or see: • Leave gates and property as you find them • Protect plants and animals, and take your litter home www.visitwyevalley.com • Keep dogs under close control • Consider other people Hunger marchers at the Inside the Mission Hall The Pumping Station www.walescoastpath.gov.uk Severn Tunnel in 1936 www.walksinchepstow.co.uk This leaflet has been funded by adventa, Monmouthshire’s Rural www.caldicotcastle.co.uk Development Programme funded by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development, the Welsh Assembly Government and Monmouthshire Sudbrook History Exhibition Local transport County Council. For more information visit www.adventa.org.uk. …at the Sudbrook Non Political Club The number 63 bus runs from the village to Caldicot, Severn Tunnel Junction Station and Newport. For details of public transport visit: Credits: Run by volunteers from Caldicot and District Local History Society, A walk through history around the www.traveline-cymru.info Images reproduced with the permission of: you will find a wealth of local information here, including an exhibition villages of Sudbrook and Portskewett Visit Wales © Crown copyright (2013) Nanette Hepburn, Monmouthshire of old photographs and a video about the area. Visitors can use the Parking County Council, Black Rock Lave Net Fishermen. resources to find out more about the Severn Railway Tunnel project, There is car parking at Black Rock Picnic Site and limited street-side Sudbrook History Society, Newport Museum and Art Gallery, Ironbridge Gorge the village of Sudbrook, the lave net fishermen car parking in Portskewett and at Sudbrook near to the Sudbrook Museums Trust, Time Team, David Morgan Photography, Private collections, of Black Rock, and much, much more. Historical Exhibition. There is plenty of parking at the alternative start The Chepstow Society. point at Caldicot Castle. With thanks to Peter Strong, Andrew Leitch and the members of Sudbrook History Society. Tea, coffee and toilets are available Provisions for a picnic can be purchased at the Spar shop opposite at the Sudbrook Non Political Club. Portskewett village green and meals can be obtained at the Disclaimer Check opening times on the website: Portskewett Inn. Call to check opening times: 01291 430505 Whilst all due care was taken in the preparation of the information contained in www.caldicothistory.org.uk/sudbrook this leaflet, neither adventa, Monmouthshire County Council, nor their agents or or call 01291 425638 servants accept any responsibility for any inaccuracies which might occur. © Published by adventa and Monmouthshire County Council 2013. On the trail of a changing coastline Since Roman times the to build a sea wall. As the marshland along the Severn climate changed in the 14th Where the Severn Estuary has been drained. This and 15th centuries the Severn starts to narrow near Sudbrook marshland was created as sea widened and, with nearby only three and a half miles of levels rose about 8000 years cliffs eroding, the medieval water separates Wales from ago. An inscribed stone found village of Sudbrook was England. Neolithic man, Iron nearby at Goldcliff records abandoned. Villagers moved Age tribes, Romans and the efforts of Roman soldiers inland to higher ground. Medieval villagers all chose to live near this vantage point overlooking the Severn. The St Pierre Pill Where is Sudbrook? river was a vital trading route Only the Roman and its influence was felt far A Customs House located Camp and medieval beside St Pierre Pill shows inland via streams and pills chapel appear on just how important trade this 1830 map. - the local name for a creek or along the Severn was, a small tidal harbour. Boats although today the Customs even travelled towards the House stands alone in fields, half a mile away from water. Roman town of Caerwent The Pill, cut off from the along the river Neddern, Severn by a railway line, has which in the past flowed into silted up. The Customs House the Severn at Sudbrook. is the white building in the centre of this picture, with Mathern Church to the right. Lave net fishermen at Black Rock. Footprints in the mud some 6,000 years old have been discovered along the Severn. People have chosen to cross the river here for thousands of years though the ferry was confusingly called the New Passage. In the 18th century a turnpike road was built to Black Rock, bringing more travellers, traders, drovers and tourists to the ferry. When the railway arrived a pier was built out into the estuary, so that travellers could alight from This is the New Passage House on the English bank, looking towards Blackrock and Sudbrook. In 1534 Henry VIII banned their train directly beside the crossings of the river at night because, ‘Many crimes, robberies ferry. Crossing was often house the men working on and murders are done in the counties of Gloucester and Somerset hazardous and the idea of in the area near the Severn River ... and after such murders and the tunnel. At the end of the an alternative route under crimes are done the said robbers, criminals and murderers, with 20th century this was also the the goods cross the river by night into South Wales’. the river was proposed in preferred route for the Second the 19th century. The place Severn Crossing which now chosen for the railway tunnel dominates the landscape. to start was Sudbrook, where a new village was built to View of the Great Western Railway Steam Ferry Pier at Black Rock. (From The Graphic, Nov 6th, 1880) of the tunnel ‘rendered obsolete the Trails through Time - Sudbrook and Portskewett Roman coins ferry which, until recent days, plied found in between the two shores’. Start: BLACK ROCK picnic site and car park the mud Grid Ref: 513881 here were From the viewing point turn right Distance: 4 miles probably and follow the Coastal Path signs An easy level walk on the coastal path, along quiet lanes, roadside thrown into keeping the river to your left. footpaths and across fields. the water as an offering A new village was built at Sudbrook to to the gods for a house the men working on the tunnel. safe crossing. This one is now The walk follows the road which was 1 Ancient river crossing in the collections of Newport made in the 1870s to link Sudbrook at Black Rock Museum and Art Gallery. with Black Rock. This became a well-trodden route; Sudbrook was a Make your way from Many people of note used the ferry, teetotal village and the Black Rock the Black Rock car park including Thomas Telford, who in 1824 Hotel was the nearest place the through the picnic site described the New Passage as ‘one workmen could get a beer! towards the Severn. At of the most forbidding places at which the viewing point looking an important ferry was ever out over the Severn, established.’ stand with your back to the river and imagine It’s no surprise that the the scene here 150 years dangerous crossing ago when the Black from Black Rock Rock Hotel occupied was unpopular. By this site. the 1870s with The Hotel was demolished in increasing coal Why was such a grand hotel built the 1960s, but you can still see freight from South here? Black Rock was the landing the slipway and Ferry Master’s Wales, the Great place for the New Passage Ferry. If House which are on the right Western Railway you look straight across the estuary in this picture. You will pass embarked on a you may be able to spot the white them at the end of the walk. feat of engineering New Passage House where travellers excellence disembarked on the English side. constructing the This whale was washed up on By the 19th century not only was popular destination in its own right with Severn Railway Tunnel. ‘Passengers the shore near Sudbrook in the Black Rock a busy hotel serving pleasure gardens, croquet, quoits and still cross the Severn here, but they go the early 20th century. ferry passengers, it had become a regular band concerts. beneath it, instead of over it’, reported the press in 1886 when the opening Keep straight on into the village. 2 Shipbuilding at Thomas Sudbrook Walker, main 3 Sudbrook contractor. On the left as you enter the village you If you look at a map of this area in ‘I know of no pass the site of one of the two brickyards the early 1870s there was only one which made bricks to line the tunnel. contractor who house - Southbrook Farm. Ten years has displayed Once the tunnel was completed this later a new village had been built. A brickyard was converted to ship so much care project on the scale of the Severn and solicitude for the comfort building.104 ships were launched and Railway Tunnel required a huge labour many were sent to South America. The The Villas, 1886. and welfare of the workpeople force and over 3000 workers needed employed by him’ wrote John Frensham at 739 tons was the largest somewhere to live. Between 1873 and the last ship built here in 1922. Hawkshaw, the Tunnel’s Chief and 1886 Thomas Walker, the main Engineer, following Walker’s contractor on the tunnel, provided death in 1889. ‘During the year previous no a mission hall, school, hospitals, a less than ten steamers were coffee house and reading room as built and despatched to the well as housing for the workforce.