Welsh Journals

quarter ago. It is because these formed the material and economic bases for the life of the communities which developed in the course of the Industrial Revolution in Monmouthshire. These communities consisted of all sorts and conditions of men, as one notable native of industrial Monmouthshire was later to write: Dr. Thomas Jones described these industrial communities as "the magnetic south into which multitudes of men, women and children had been drawn from North and Mid Wales, and from the West of England. They came from distant areas on foot and in carts; they came as Christians and as pagans, thrifty and profligate; clean and dirty; and gradually sorted themselves out in their new surroundings according to tradi- tion and habit". As far as the people themselves were concerned, there is no doubt that the best contemporary evidence we have of the way "they sorted themselves out", is to look at the churches and chapels they built and attended, together with their benefit societies and pubs. THE MEDIAEVAL CASTLE IN MONMOUTHSHIRE by JEREMY KNIGHT HISTORY (as opposed to archaeology) implies a written record. Our first real written record of Monmouthshire comes from the Domes- day survey. By the time it was compiled in 1086-7 William Fitz Osbern, who had been settled as Earl Palatine of Hereford by William the Conqueror soon after the battle of Hastings, was dead, his son had forfeited for rebellion and his lands had been dispersed. Nevertheless we get from the survey our first picture of the medieval settlement of Gwent. Virtually all the places named in the survey are in Gwent Is Coed-the coastal plain between Chepstow and Newport. About Chepstow Castle Domesday is quite explicit "Earl William built the castle of Estrighoiel"1 we are told, and we can safely add Monmouth Castle; two castles guarding the two flanks of the precipitous lower stretch of the Wye Valley. Both castles had, exceptionally for this period, defences of stone-a hall keep at Monmouth, another, pro- tected by two stone walled baileys, at Chepstow. Caerwent, with its intact Roman walls and key siting in the centre of the coastal plain on the line of the Roman main road was an obvious position to occupy and when we find an entry in Domesday reading "Durand the Sheriff holds of the King in Caroen (Caerwent) one land called Caldicot" it tells us a lot. "In Caroen" means in (the castellery of) Caerwent and the fact that the King held it implies that William Fitz Osbern must have kept it in his own hands. There is a small castle