HISTORY FROM CHEPSTOW TO NASH POINT
Rosemary Scadden visited Cowbridge U3A History group in January 2019 for the third time in five years to give another of her excellent illustrated presentations. The talk, entitled ‘History on the Edge’, was based on a 50 mile journey along the River Severn from Minsterworth, one of the best places to see the Severn Bore as it rushes upriver, then down to Chepstow, with two nearby massive river bridges carrying 80,000 vehicles daily, on to Newport (transporter bridge and medieval ship), followed by Cardiff and then along the Welsh coast to the lighthouse (the last manned one in Wales) at Nash Point, via numerous places of interest.
The majority of the photographs were Rosemary’s own (‘taken only on sunny days’ she informed the audience) and depicted many of the locations encountered on the journey, some familiar and others completely unknown to U3A members.
Just a few examples are highlighted here.
The story of the Severn railway bridge, built in 1875 upriver from Chepstow, was new to many. In 1960, two river barges hit one of the piers on the bridge, causing two spans to collapse into the river. It was decided that it would be uneconomical to repair the structure and it was demolished.
Sudbrook was the village greatly enlarged to house the 3,000 workers constructing the 4 mile Severn railway tunnel. Commencing in 1873, the work took 13 years to complete. A huge pumping station still removes 10 million gallons of fresh water from a massive spring in the tunnel. The water isn’t wasted – it’s used to make beer at the large brewery in Magor.
Churches in the Gwent Levels at Redwick and Golcliff have markers indicating the height the waters reached during the Great Flood of 1607, which was caused by either a storm surge or a tsunami. This was one of the worst natural disasters recorded in Britain.
The church in Nash was the temporary mortuary of Louisa Maud Evans, the 14-year-old balloonist known as ‘Mademoiselle Albertina’, who drowned in 1896 when her flight from Cardiff sadly went amiss.
At Swanbridge, a traffic light system has been installed in an attempt to prevent people being stranded on Sully Island by the incoming tide.
Sully hospital opened in 1936 as a specialist tuberculosis facility. Later, it served as a general chest and heart treatment facility. There, surgeons honed their heart surgery skills on sheep, which, after their operations, went into intensive care as part of the treatment learning process. The hospital closed in 2001 and has now converted into luxury apartments.
The Beachley-Aust car ferry, Dewstow Gardens, the Usk lighthouses, Lavernock Point (along with Flat Holm, where the first wireless signals over open sea were transmitted and received in 1897), Barry, Penarth, Rhoose Point, St Donats and numerous other places featured in Rosemary’s interesting and informative talk.
One last nugget of knowledge was that the Severn estuary officially becomes the Bristol Channel at Lavernock Point. As Michael Caine reputedly said; ‘Not a lot of people know that’.
Steve Monaghan