Llangynidr

The Canal Stair and Its Wharf

Five locks step up out of the valley at Llangynidr, raising the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal seventeen metres over about half a mile. Between the upper two sits a side pond that stores the water the flight needs to work, and by Lock 65 a few benches make a picnic spot. The engineer Thomas Dadford brought the canal here from Gilwern by the end of 1797; the rising ground east of the village is what forced the staircase of locks.

Around 1806, sixteen boats worked from the wharf and as many as a hundred called in a week. Local research reckons two hundred canal labourers were at work around the village at once, against a resident population of about six hundred.

Two Pubs, Two Long Histories

The Coach and Horses sits on the bank near the lock flight, its garden running down to the water. It began as seventeenth-century stables and did well once boatmen needed feeding and beds. Inside there is a dining bar and a restored games room with pool and darts; recent Sunday lunches have run to beef and venison roasts. A Rhymney ale is usually on, with changing guests from breweries such as Electric Bear and Salopian. Dogs are welcome, and there is a play area by the canal for children. In 1903 the landlord was fined ten shillings for serving on a Sunday.

The Red Lion stands by the parish church, the other social pole of the village. It reopened in April 2024 under new management and cooks home, seasonal food: a family Sunday roast, steak, madras curry with rice and naan. Grey Trees Mosaic Pale Ale is the regular, with St Austell Proper Job and Wye Valley HPA passing through. Dogs are welcome here too. The building has stood since the sixteenth century and has served as a pub since the 1840s.

Church, Post and Village Memory

The church, Ss Cynidr and Mary, is plain and uncluttered inside. A Christian site is traditionally placed here in the sixth century, and a stone church appears in a 1587 estate survey, but the present building follows a fire in 1928. The lychgate of 1893 was restored in 2019, keeping its old stone roof tiles. There is no mains water and no toilet. A public footpath still runs through the churchyard; an attempt to close it in the mid-nineteenth century failed.

The Post Office on Coed Yr Ynys Road handles post, banking, bills and travel money. The village once had plenty of trade: the local history society counts at least nine former inns, among them the Three Salmons, the White Lion and the Mason's Arms, and the last working mill kept going until just before the Second World War.

The Usk Bridge and Towpath Days

The other fixed point is the bridge, built around 1700 to replace an earlier crossing. It carries the B4560 over the Usk on six low rubble-stone arches with full-height V-shaped cutwaters, and is Grade I listed. This is the south side of the village, the Usk below and the hills of Bannau Brycheiniog rising beyond.

For walkers, the towpath runs level to Tal-y-bont, 3.3 miles each way past Ashford Tunnel and Coombs Lock. The village hall and recreation ground add playing fields and tennis courts, and on 30 August the agricultural show fills them with livestock judging, showjumping and a dog show. The 43 bus links the village hall to Crickhowell, four miles east, and on to Abergavenny for trains.

Pikes, Treason and a Parting Remark

The village keeps its odd corners of history. The blacksmith John Owen the younger made pikes for the Chartists before the Newport Rising of 1839, then told the court trying him for high treason that he had been coerced and had got deliberately drunk in a Llangynidr pub so he could not join the march. The early historian Theophilus Jones, less impressed, described the place as "near a few houses called a village."