Canal, limestone and red sandstone
Llangattock
A Usk Valley village where a historic wharf, old quarry landscape, village pubs and an ancient long barrow fit naturally into a slow day.
- Best for
- Canal, limestone and village history
- Give it
- A slow afternoon
- Don't miss
- The tram-car benches above the wharf limekilns
Photo: Ruth Sharville · CC BY-SA 2.0 · cropped
The Fox verdict
Come for the canal; stay for the layers of village history
Llangattock pairs a canal towpath with limestone scenery, red-stone heritage and two village pubs.
The wharf gives the clearest introduction: picnic benches echo the tram-cars that once crossed the limekilns, while the canal towpath continues in either direction. The escarpment, St Catwg's church, village pubs and Garn Goch add reasons to linger.
Where to go
Places in Llangattock
Every place below is checked against a published source, listed with what it is and how long to give it.
Local signatures
3 placesLlangattock Wharf and Limekilns
A canal-side picnic site above a Grade II*-listed limekiln, with benches shaped to recall the tram-cars that once crossed the kiln tops.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 45 minutes
- Locality
- At Llangattock village wharf
Horse Shoe Inn
An independent pub and lodging house in a Grade II-listed early-19th-century coaching inn, with a garden and Raymond Hinds's Jamaican-and-Welsh cooking.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 1 hour 15 minutes
- Locality
- Llangattock village
The Vine Tree
An 1857 coaching inn at Legar, now a pub serving coffee, house-baked pastries, hand-stretched pizza and beer beside Crickhowell Bridge.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 1 hour 30 minutes
- Locality
- Legar, beside Crickhowell Bridge
Walks & outdoors
2 placesMonmouthshire & Brecon Canal Towpath
A peaceful, historic and wildlife-rich canal walk that can be followed from Llangattock in either direction.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 1 hour 30 minutes
- Locality
- From Llangattock in either direction
Llangattock Escarpment Walk
An easy-graded National Park route among craggy escarpments and wildlife-rich limestone cliffs, estimated at two hours.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 2 hours
- Locality
- Llangattock Escarpment
History & heritage
2 places
Church of St Catwg
A Grade II*-listed red-stone church, late-Perpendicular in character and dominated by its crenellated west tower, with memorials to midwife Ann Lewis and Sunday-school teacher Rachel Jones.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 35 minutes
- Locality
- Llangattock
Garn Goch
A scheduled long barrow dated to 4000-3000 BC; an 1874 investigation found a burial chamber and evidence of burial and ritual practice.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 30 minutes
- Locality
- Inside Llangattock Recreation Ground
Things to do
1 placeLlangattock Recreation Ground
A recreation ground with a wheelchair-accessible circuit path, play equipment, a basketball hoop and an outdoor table-tennis table.
- Visit length
- Editorial estimate: Allow around 45 minutes
- Locality
- Llangattock Recreation Ground
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Three ways to explore Llangattock
Signature outings
Read the wharf's industrial story
Tram-car-shaped benches above the listed limekiln connect an ordinary picnic stop with the limestone traffic that once crossed the kiln tops.
Find St Catwg's red-stone tower
The crenellated west tower dominates a church whose memorials preserve two unusually personal village stories.
Walk below the limestone cliffs
The 3.25-mile National Park route spends about two hours among the escarpment's crags, limestone cliffs and wildlife.
The village story
Llangattock: canal industry beneath the limestone
Canal benches, red-sandstone lanes, pub kitchens, church memorials and a prehistoric barrow sit beneath the limestone escarpment.
Wharf Industry and Red-Sandstone Lanes
The picnic benches at Llangattock Wharf mimic the tram-cars that once ran across the tops of the limekilns below them. One kiln is Grade II*-listed. Beside it, the historic Monmouthshire & Brecon Canal has a towpath leading in either direction.
Llangattock sits in the Usk valley just south of Crickhowell, under the limestone cliffs and old quarry workings of the escarpment that carries its name. The core is red sandstone: narrow unpavemented lanes, setted passages, stone walls and mature beech hedges, with the Nant Onneu brook threading through. Views open north across the rooftops to Crickhowell, and south to the crags.
Two Coaching Inns, Two Ways to Eat
The Horse Shoe Inn reopened in 2017 after a long closure. It is an early-19th-century coaching inn, and the carriage entrance is still there in the range. The kitchen belongs to Raymond Hinds, who calls his cooking "Jamwelsh": Jamaican street food alongside home-cooked Welsh dishes. Dishes have included jerk chicken with rice and peas, boneless curry goat, jerk beef flat rib, and a coconut king-prawn curry served in half a pineapple, with beer-battered haddock and a beetroot-and-mixed-bean burger for anyone wanting to stay closer to home. Wye Valley Butty Bach and Sharp's Sea Fury are the regular cask ales. There is a garden, parking, and a play park across the road. Dogs are welcome; "we love the atmosphere and drink selection and our dog is made very welcome too," wrote Stuart Lawes.
The Vine Tree stands at Legar beside Crickhowell Bridge in a coaching inn established in 1857. The pub serves coffee, pastries baked in-house, hand-stretched pizza and beer. A garden lies across the road, while the south bank gives views back over the bridge to Crickhowell and Table Mountain.
Village Provisions and St Catwg's Stories
The village has no shop of its own, so Crickhowell, a short walk across the Usk bridge, supplies the provisions. Askew's Family Bakery does bread, cakes and pies; M. T. Cashell has traded as a butcher, greengrocer and deli since 1975 and keeps more than seventy-five cheeses; Blas on Beaufort Street sells wine, beer and spirits, with a focus on Welsh producers; Grenfell & Sons handles groceries.
The Church of St Catwg is the red-stone building with the crenellated tower, probably 16th-century, though local tradition dates it to the 12th. A church is first recorded here in the sixth century. Inside, a memorial records Ann Lewis, a midwife who died in 1773 and was credited as "an instrument in the hand of providence to bring into this world 716 children"; a window near the font remembers Rachel Jones, who taught Sunday school for forty-five years.
Play, Prehistory and the Limestone Escarpment
The recreation ground carries the everyday and the very old side by side: a wheelchair-accessible circuit path, play equipment, a basketball hoop, an outdoor table-tennis table and Garn Goch, a long barrow dated to somewhere between 4000 and 3000 BC. Abergavenny is the practical railhead on the Welsh Marches line; Service 43 serves Plas Derwen, and the B4558 runs along the village edge.
The 3.25-mile escarpment walk passes among limestone cliffs rich in wildlife. Village lanes offer a gentler afternoon, with views towards Crickhowell.
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A guide with a point of view
Written from research. Edited for real journeys.
Use the Official site links for live practical details, then use this guide for context, ideas and room to explore.
Photography credits & licences
Third-party photographs are credited to their named creators and reused under the linked Creative Commons licence or public-domain dedication. Travel Fox stores an optimised local copy; the file-specific changes and any browser-applied display crop are disclosed below. Reused photographs link both to the Wikimedia Commons source record and to the declared source image; Travel Fox's own photographs carry no such record and are marked as ours. These image licences do not cover Travel Fox text, branding or page design.
- File:St Catwg's church and churchyard, Llangattock - geograph.org.uk - 2030563.jpg — photograph by Ruth Sharville; St Catwg's church and churchyard, Llangattock by Ruth Sharville. Source record on Wikimedia Commons. Declared source image. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0. File changes: Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons, resized to a maximum 1920px edge and encoded as an optimised JPEG. Display changes: Displayed with responsive CSS cropping.
Sources
Every place on this page is checked against a published source. Each entry links the record we used and names who publishes it.
- Llangattock Wharf and Limekilns — canalrivertrust.org.uk national body or asset manager
- Monmouthshire & Brecon Canal Towpath — canalrivertrust.org.uk national body or asset manager
- Horse Shoe Inn — thehorseshoe.wales operator, sector body or destination organisation
- The Vine Tree — blodeuo.co.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Church of St Catwg — catwg.org.uk operator, sector body or destination organisation
- Llangattock Escarpment Walk — beacons-npa.gov.uk statutory register or public authority
- Llangattock Recreation Ground — llangattock-cc.gov.wales statutory register or public authority
- Garn Goch — llangattock-cc.gov.wales statutory register or public authority