Talk:Monnow Bridge

1900 "gift"

"A brass plaque attached to the front of Monnow Gate, along with the influence of the Somersets at Raglan, has led many to the erroneous conclusion that the Dukes of Beaufort had some ancient claim on the monument. However, Monnow Gate was directly associated with that family only from 1830 until 1900. In 1830 the duke accepted Monnow Gate in exchange for property which the corporation wanted at the Beaufort Arms yard. For the remainder of the century the gate continued mostly in disuse, or at the most in use as a storeroom. At the turn of this century, as some of the Beaufort estates were being sold, His Grace decided to present the gate to the County Council as they already owned the bridge." [1] Worthy of any mention? Thanks Martinevans123 (talk) 16:20, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

I now have an entire book about the history of the bridge - M Rowlands, Monnow Bridge and Gate. I'm sure it will give more info on the plaque and its background, and I'll include it in due course if no-one else gets in first. Ghmyrtle (talk) 17:43, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, that's exactly the same source as quoted on that castlewales.com page! Martinevans123 (talk) 17:52, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

I know, but the book is a lot longer..... Ghmyrtle (talk) 18:36, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

PS: I've now added a few details about the plaque, and other things, from the book. If you need to know any more about the bridge and gatehouse, the book has extremely full details, which I can add on request! Ghmyrtle (talk) 21:46, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

For how long was it a dwelling, who lived it - and why!? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:05, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

1705 to before 1804; and, gatekeepers. Ghmyrtle (talk) 22:18, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Well, that kind of fits! But one assumes just a gatekeeper, and not his family also. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:25, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Later activities and works

Last time used for defense of Monmouth? - Chartist Rebelion - John Bull (London, England), Sunday, December 15, 1839; pg. 592; Issue 992. ....the arched gateway of Monnow Bridge leading to the town, has likewise been put in a state of defence Berrow's Worcester Journal (Worcester, England), Saturday, April 30, 1892; pg. 6 Issue 10359. 19th Century British Library Newspapers Part II.

Found this article in Berrow Worcester Journel ref above: "Monnow Bridge Monmouth is now under repair. Its an interesting structure. A gate surmounted by a loop holed keep or watch tower, stands at the head of the bridge on the town side which was used for defensive purposes for the last time in 1839, when the Chartists were in Newport and an attack in Monmouth was anticipated". Antarchie (talk) 20:51, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Berrow's Worcester Journal claims to be "the oldest surviving newspaper in the World". Martinevans123 (talk) 20:58, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Monnow Bridge Tower

In pursuit of Mary Ellen Bagnall-Oakeley's Monnow Bridge Tower pamphlet, I have contacted the following:

• Monmouth Library and Monmouth Museum;
• Librarians at both Haberdashers Schools - MSG had Mary Ellen on its board and MS has an extensive local archive;
• Newport Central Library;
• Bristol Central Library;
• National Library of Wales;
• Bangor University Library - their catalogue says they have a copy but they can't find it;
• Monmouthshire Antiquarian Association;
• Clifton Antiquarian Association;
• Gwent County Records Office;
• Gwent County History Association.

I have drawn a blank in every case. My last thought is M.L.J. Rowlands, via his publisher. Any other thoughts on possible locations/leads would be much appreciated. KJP1 (talk) 17:44, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

And then Newport Library digs a little deeper and turns it up. KJP1 (talk) 18:28, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Monnow Bridge/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 16:03, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Comments

This is a nicely-polished article, fully cited, and with solid sourcing. I don't see much to comment on at GA level but may be able to make one or two small suggestions.

• The British Listed Buildings entry, which is cited ([67]), seems to contain quite a few interesting details not in the article, like the "Caernarvon head" to the Southern arch on the West elevation. Maybe one or two things would be worth a mention perhaps.

Y Done. I hope I've picked up the, omitted, additional architectural details. KJP1 (talk) 18:59, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

• It seems that the same ref now has different names. Should merge [7], [68], [70], [73], [79].

Y Done.

Lead

• You might want to mention one or two more of the artists who've drawn or painted the bridge as mentioned in the article.

{{aye}} Done.

• "though Royal charter" -> "through".

Y Done.

• Funded by the taxes and tolls: seems to imply the bridge paid for the town! I guess there were other tollgates, though perhaps the bridge tollgate was specially important. You might want to tweak the claim.

Y Done. Sufficiently, through making it clear the Gate wasn't solely responsible, I hope. KJP1 (talk) 17:56, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

History

• Not clear why we say tradition is 1272, and then give prominence to a quote by Heath that just says date is unknown - why is the wording of this of so much interest? Did he and Grose not tell any more exciting stories of the bridge than that they didn't know when it was built?

N I think 1272 is quite important, as it's given as the traditional date in all the modern sources, (Newman etc.), followed by the "undocumented" caveat. Unfortunately, neither Heath nor Grose do have any more exciting stories to relate. That said, I really quite like Heath's explanation for why the date is unknown - it's a more poetic, and less hackneyed, version of "lost in the mists of time." Would you be okay with leaving it? KJP1 (talk) 18:15, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

• In fact, why are Heath and Grose not listed in the References? And maybe Leland, too. I see you've named him via Kissack.

A very good point. I thought long about this but my stumbling block is that I don't know the page numbers for Heath and Leland, and don't have them. The Grose page number I can pick up from the online version. I shall put them in, as they certainly should be in, and think about how to get round the page numbers problem. KJP1 (talk) 16:58, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Y Done. I learn from Worldcat that Heath is unnumbered. Leland's more complicated, with a very messy publishing history. I've put unknown for present but will have to do more digging. KJP1 (talk) 17:39, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

• "carried out on the bridge, this began ": either replace comma with semicolon (bridge; this) or use a full stop (bridge. This ...).

Y Done. By use of a semicolon. KJP1 (talk) 17:39, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

In art

• Perhaps the heading could be shortened, and it should use Sentence case.

Y Done. I hope, assuming I've understood correctly. KJP1 (talk) 17:42, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Architecture

• I found myself wanting to look in more detail at the western front, but the image is mainly and unduly devoted to the "Millennium Plinth", not the topic of the article. Perhaps there's a better image, say File:DYKGatehouse.jpg.

Y Done. By replacement. I agree it's a better photo for the subject of the article. KJP1 (talk) 17:49, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

• I couldn't see the height given anywhere, either of the tower, or of the parapet above the base. Perhaps these are details of interest, given it's the only fortified tower over a bridge left in Britain.

It would indeed be useful but I can't find it! I thought Structurae would definitely give it but it doesn't. Will keep looking.

Y Done. Rowlands to the rescue! KJP1 (talk) 18:40, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

References

• Perhaps we could lose the "& Co. LTD" from Kissack 1975, and the "Publishing Limited" from Rowland 1994.

Y Done. KJP1 (talk) 17:44, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Images

• All seem apposite except for the plinth already mentioned. Personally I'd use a cropped version of Gastineau as the buffspace takes up far too much of the postage stamp area. Easy to do with the new crop tool, btw.

Y Done - In relation to the plinth. I shall see what I can do re. cropping but my Wiki technical skills leave much to be desired. KJP1 (talk) 17:57, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Summary

There seems very little wrong with this article, and I'll be happy to pass it as soon as these very minor issues are addressed. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:04, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

I really appreciate the review - extremely helpful and has greatly improved the article. Hope I've picked up all the necessary points. Regards. KJP1 (talk) 19:01, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

My pleasure. If you'd just merge the refs mentioned above, I think we're done. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:23, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

YDone, I think. Really appreciate your input. Thanks and best regards. KJP1 (talk) 20:38, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Congratulations

Great to see this promoted. Excellent work people!♦ Dr. Blofeld 13:31, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Frias Bridge, Burgos

Medieval bridge at Frías

This makes an interesting comparison. Was this what the top of the Monnow Bridge originally looked like? KJP1 (talk) 14:18, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Millennium Plinth

The Plinth showing the bridge in the bottom centre-left, with graffiti!

TFAR

Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Monnow Bridge --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:10, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

"British Listed Buildings" reference

A key reference (<ref name="britishlistedbuildings1">, credited to "Good Stuff") is to the entry on the British Listed Buildings website (http://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/300002218-monnow-bridge-and-gateway-monmouth). British Listed Buildings is, as I understand it, essentially a repurposing of existing public-domain (?) data from official agencies, with crowd-sourced photos. The same text appears at http://www.gatehouse-gazetteer.info/Welshsites/582.html suffixed with the words "(Listed Building Report)". So my hunch is that the BLB text actually comes from an official CADW publication or report, and shouldn't be credited to "Good Stuff"...but I've not been able to find the original. Any thoughts? Dave.Dunford (talk) 09:36, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

@Dave.Dunford: Hi Dave - my understanding of the chronology, which may well be wrong, is as follows: for a long time British Listed Buildings Online (BLBO) was the "official" on-line site for listed building records. When Historic England (HE) was split off from English Heritage under the last government, it took over responsibility for the on-line listings for England, and the listings were copied over and are now maintained and updated by HE on its own site, while BLBO is no longer updated. Sometime early, under devolution, CADW, under its Coflein arm, took over responsibility for Welsh listings, but unfortunately, as Coflein staff have acknowledged to me, they did not do a great job on the main listings, which in most cases are rather "minimal". However, buried away here, [2], you can find a map based site that gives the more detailed text - which is a straight lift from BLBO, with some, occasional, updating, see Monnow Bridge and Gatehouse, here (CADW) [3] and here, (BLBO) [4].

Sorry for the long explanation, but the bottom line, I think, is that the BLBO site is a perfectly valid and reliable source to use, indeed I use it very extensively for architecture articles. That said, if people would prefer we use the CADW/Coflein, I can do that, although the actual text will be identical. But I can't get to it just now, as I'm in Athens, and it's a pain to do on the laptop. I'm back before it's due on the front page, however, and can certainly address it then, if needed. All the best. KJP1 (talk) 16:02, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

@KJP1: No, BLBO is not, and has never been, an official site – you may be thinking of Images of England (which was an official Millennium project based on a snapshot of the English listing data, and is similarly not updated). BLBO may be a valid source to cite, but it's very much a secondary source: it isn't official, the list of sites is based on a snapshot that doesn't get (regularly) updated and, for English properties at least, the text is a copy of that on the official listing. For example, compare a random English BLBO entry with the same building on the official NHLE site: the former even has the same OCR errors ("I704" for "1704") as the original. See also the "about" information at BLBO, particularly this:

BritishListedBuildings.co.uk is an independent online resource and is not associated with any government department. All government data published here is used under licence. Please do not contact BritishListedBuildings.co.uk for any queries related to any individual listed building, planning permission related to listed buildings or the listing process itself.

For English listings, the official NHLE site is definitely the better reference, as it's the official source and the one that gets updated (I know this for a fact, as I've personally sent listing corrections to Historic England (formerly English Heritage) that have appeared on NHLE immediately). However, for Welsh sites I've not been able to find out where BLBO gets its descriptive text from (until a relatively recent upgrade, it didn't have any text at all for non-English sites) but I'm almost certain (as a former user) that BLBO is not the original source and the original (if available online) would be preferable. Dave.Dunford (talk) 16:58, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

@KJP1: As you've already found (and I had overlooked), the original text from CADW is at http://cadwpublic-api.azurewebsites.net/reports/listedbuilding/FullReport?lang=en&id=2218 – BLBO has copied this data, not the other way round. There doesn't appear to be a citation template for CADW listings, as there is for NHLE, so I'll just adjust the citation manually, if that's OK with you? Dave.Dunford (talk) 17:16, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

@Dave.Dunford: Dave, just to be clear, I didn't say BLBO ever was an official site, hence my use of quote marks. But I think it was, for quite a while, the only on-line source for listing records. And, again for accuracy, I'm not at all sure BLBO did "copy" from CADW. I think they are both using the same original source, namely the UK governmental listings compiled from the 1940s/50s onwards. Lastly, BLBO's certainly had Welsh listings as long as I've been on Wikipedia (about 10 years), because I've used them extensively, and I suspect it has had them for much longer than that, to a time pre-dating the existence of CADW, although not the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales.

All that said, I've absolutely no problem at all with using CADW as the source, if that's felt to be preferable, or with you amending the citations as suggested. Regards. KJP1 (talk) 18:01, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

@KJP1:Gotcha, and sorry if I misinterpreted you – I wasn't trying to be combative, and I should have read your words more carefully. I've not been heavily involved in heritage topics on Wikipedia as long as you have, but I've been interested long enough to remember the time when BLBO was the most usable (if not the most definitive) online source – which is why I was a BLBO contributor for a while. But I do think it's best to cite (and credit) the original source where possible, so I'll change the citation now. Dave.Dunford (talk) 18:25, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

@Dave.Dunford:Dave, no problem at all, and many thanks for making the amendment. It's always great to encounter editors with similar interests, both in the subject matter and in having well-cited articles. Now, off to dinner - the Greeks eat late! All the best, KJP1 (talk) 18:39, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

Pronunciation

The point re. pronunciation of the Welsh name is well made - I see we did it for Castell Coch. I shall try and work it out and put it in, but any offer from a Welsh-speaking editor who knows what they're doing would be much appreciated! KJP1 (talk) 18:50, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

My Welsh-speaking sister-in-law has now provided a Welsh pronunciation. KJP1 (talk) 07:38, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Uniqueness

The article on Monmouth claims there are only three such bridges in Europe; here, it is not repeated, but it is stated it's the only in Britain. A reader visiting the article on bridge tower is surely bound to be confused, for the list is much longer there, and even 14th c examples are numerous. It might be that the claims are true in their strict wording, but the general impression is still somewhat confusing. --146.255.182.91 (talk) 09:02, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

• Such claims are almost never useful. "Rare" is the most we should bother stating. The problem is that there are many bridges and towers, and only one called "Monnow bridge". It's probably true that there are only "three similar bridges", but what that doesn't tell us is how narrow the definition had to be drawn to limit it so much (I think it's based on them being footbridges) - thus it's not a useful measure as a count unless the definition is given too.

I'd switch it out for "rare". That's the only aspect which is really relevant to Monnow. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:42, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Apologies - only just noticed this. I can't answer for the Monmouth article but the claim here, that Monnow Bridge is the only remaining fortified river bridge in Great Britain with its gate tower standing on the bridge (my bold), is pretty well referenced I think. KJP1 (talk) 19:05, 7 December 2018 (UTC)