Monmouthshire Antiq 12

A biography of Jeremy Knight, to whom -- on his retirement from Cadw -- this volume is dedicated.

The known ground plan of the Roman town of Venta Silurum was produced in 1913 after many years of trenching the upper deposits of over twenty insulae. Hence it is a plan of one of the later Roman towns and thus little light has been shed on its origins and early development. More recent research, commencing in 1981, has redressed this imbalance.

The Norman new town of Monmouth was laid out in the eleventh century over a layer of plough soil similar to the `dark earth' found elsewhere. A large wooden structure lying a little way distant also stands on top of this layer but, it is argued, to be pre-Norman in date. The building, aligned to the Roman rather than to the Norman, street plan could have been part of a previously unrecognised Saxon burgh or alternatively it may have a Celtic origin.

A series of tiles, now set into a fireplace, is described. It seems that these were taken from Tintern and re-used in the Beaufort family's chantry at St George's, Windsor.

It is argued that earlier interpretations of the plan of Raglan are incorrect and that the later entrance bridge was a conventional structure and not a drawbridge.

The process of scouring the surface of the land to expose outcrops of and to clean iron ore was common, but has rarely been studied. This paper describes a group of features resulting from this process north of Blaenavon.

A chronological listings of the major publications (as opposed to review notices and contributions to excursion guides) of the recently retired Cadw inspector.