Scethrog

The Tower and George Melly

Scethrog Tower stands on a low knoll where the Usk floodplain pushes out toward the A40, a battered rubble structure of one room per floor, its corner stairs climbing to an upper storey that still keeps the parapet of a former wall walk inside. Cadw calls it one of only two tower houses in the area and a rare, well-preserved example of the type. A Royal Commission record puts it more plainly, as "a small and unexpectedly lofty cottage."

For years the Tower was the Welsh home of George Melly, the jazz singer and critic, who fished the Usk from it. He bought a stretch of the river by selling works by Picasso, Klee and Magritte, and appeared often at the Brecon Jazz Festival a few miles up the road.

A Hamlet Without a Centre

The hamlet around the Tower has no real centre. The houses straggle up the south-facing hillside beside a lane running north from the main road, an arrangement early Ordnance Survey maps already show much as it stands today. The name comes from the Welsh sgathrog, a rough or rocky settlement, and turns up in old documents as Skathrok, Skethrog and skatherogg between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The village sits in a quiet position on the north bank of the Usk, seven kilometres south-east of Brecon. The A40 runs directly past; the nearest railway is at Abergavenny, and the 43 and X43 buses serve the surrounding villages but no longer stop here, the old Post Bus having been withdrawn around 2007.

Nearby Food and Inns

Talybont-on-Usk, about two and a half miles away, has the nearest shop and pubs. The village store doubles as café and post office, serving cooked breakfasts, cakes and lunchtime specials alongside home-cooked Indian dishes and takeaway curries. The Star Inn has a large garden beside the river; the White Hart, an old coaching inn, keeps canal-side seating at the rear and welcomes well-behaved dogs front and back.

For a longer meal, the Three Horseshoes at Groesffordd, roughly three miles off, has been run by Ashley Haworth for more than twenty years, with Alex Parrett in the kitchen. The seasonal menu has featured slow-braised shoulder of lamb with creamed potato and wild garlic, battered Cornish fish with crushed peas, and roasted celeriac with dauphinoise, tenderstem broccoli and romesco. Its garden has heated, lit beach huts that seat eight, and dogs are welcome in the bar and garden, including the beach huts. The pub holds two AA rosettes and was named best in Powys at the 2018 National Pub & Bar Awards.

Walks, Vaughan and the A40

The Henry Vaughan Walk from Talybont is a generally level, moderate two-mile circuit along the canal towpath and the cobbled Brinore Tramroad, its benches and waymarkers carrying lines of Vaughan's poetry. Vaughan, the seventeenth-century poet and physician, was born just along the valley at Newton and lies in the churchyard at Llansantffraed, where St Ffraed's was rebuilt in 1884 and keeps a medieval stoup in its porch and a window head dated 1626 in the vestry. For more height, the Allt yr Esgair circuit climbs 320 metres to a ridge with views over Llangorse Lake.

The A40 has its own history. In October 1957 a lorry carrying three and a half tons of TNT caught fire and exploded on the road at Scethrog, tearing a crater fifteen feet deep and forty-two across and blowing out windows some distance away. The driver and his mate had run up the road to stop the traffic, and both survived. The county surveyor had the hole filled and the road open again by the end of the day.

Vaughan's Grave and Evensong

Every year an evensong at St Ffraed's includes a reading of Siegfried Sassoon's poem about Vaughan's grave, set "above the voiceful windings of a river," and the laying of a wreath.