Govilon

The Wharf and the Valley

At Govilon Wharf a three-storey warehouse of rubble stone still carries the frame of its old crane and an exterior loading stair. It was built around 1820 for Crawshay Bailey, who needed somewhere to move iron and coal between his tramroad and the Monmouthshire & Brecon Canal. The water beside it still carries narrowboats past the old limekilns.

The village sits at the foot of the Blorenge in the Usk Valley, where Cwm Shenkin Brook comes off the hills onto the floodplain. The brook is the reason there is a village here at all: it powered mills and forges, and the name is thought to come from the Welsh gefail, a forge. Wooded slopes rise on one side and the Black Mountains sit across the valley on the other. Part of the wharf landscape falls inside the Blaenavon Industrial World Heritage Site.

The Inn and the Village Store

The Bridgend Inn stands just off the main road beside a stream, close to both the canal and the old railway line. It dates to 1786, traded for a while as Tafarn y Bont, and has recently been renovated and reopened under its English name. The kitchen serves traditional British food, including Sunday roast, and there is cask ale at the bar.

For everything else there is the village store on Merthyr Road, the sort of place a canal crew stocks up at before casting off; the Beacon Park Boats hire fleet lists it among their provisioning stops.

Following Water, Rails and Worship

Most of the walking follows water and rails. The canal towpath's 3.5-mile line towards Llanfoist passes the wharf, Bailey's tramroad junction and the industrial remains along the cut. The old railway trackbed, closed to passengers in 1958, is now a walking and cycling route; the Govilon Line covers 2.6 kilometres of it between two canalside villages. A shorter heritage loop of about an hour leaves from the Govilon Wharf car park, taking in Bailey's Warehouse, a skew railway bridge, the Baptist chapel and the former station.

Christ Church was consecrated in 1860, built because villagers had until then crossed the Usk by ferry to worship at Llanwenarth. Its west tower was never finished, but the stained glass inside is unusually good for a village church: Christopher Whall's St George, A. K. Nicholson's St Matthew and St Mark, and later work by John Petts and Georgina Lester. Above the canal, Llanwenarth Baptist Church keeps a substantially eighteenth-century interior of box pews, a gallery on three sides, and a baptistery set beneath the pulpit. The fellowship dates back to 1652.

Bailey's Lines and Village Life

Bailey built his tramroad in seven months. When it opened in December 1821 the procession carried coal, a single huge lump of it, and bars of iron down to Abergavenny, where the coal was given to the town's poor. A Hereford Journal writer, marvelling at the speed of the work, said it had gone ahead "regardless alike of the adamantine rocks and stupendous precipices." The railway that arrived in 1862 replaced the tramroad, and commercial barge traffic on the canal ended in 1933.

There is a playing field on Merthyr Road with an enclosed play area and room for a dog to run, and an outdoor activity centre in the village that runs gorge walking, caving, climbing and paddlesport for those who want the hills organised for them. Abergavenny is about three miles off, with its indoor market, a free museum in the grounds of a ruined Norman castle, and the nearest railway station; the B4246 runs through the village and the Stagecoach 76 stops at Blaenavon Road Turn.

The First Inland Cruising Club

In 1963 a group founded the Govilon Boat Club in the old wharfinger's office, the first inland cruising club on the Welsh canals.