Mathern, Black Rock and Sudbrook

Here's a nice, easy 5¾ mile out-and-back walk, with a few places of historical interest on the way.

The walk starts in Mathern, just outside Chepstow. The church here is dedicated to St Tewdrig, a Celtic saint that I had never heard of before. A nearby notice board informed me that he was a King of Gwent who turned his back on kingship to live as a hermit at Tintern. However, his fellow countrymen called him back to fight one last battle against the Saxons, which he won but in which he was mortally wounded. Where he died, they built a church and buried his body near the altar.

This imposing wooden sculpture was placed outside the churchyard in 2011, so now Tewdrig peers up the road towards Chepstow, dissuading any remaining marauding Saxons from disturbing the peace.  Perhaps recognising fellow Celts, he looked kindly upon us as we walked around his churchyard and down to a rather muddy field. There has been a lot of rain recently.

This deep inlet of St Pierre Pill illustrates clearly the enormous tidal range on the River Severn – the second largest in the world. It's low tide and a long way down to those yachts.  Yes, that's the old Severn Bridge (M48) in the background. Far prettier, I think, than it's more modern counterpart downriver.

This is Black Rock. A ferry once ran from here to the Bristol side of the river and in 1863 a pier was constructed so that rail passengers could make the crossing, avoiding the long journey via Gloucester. It didn't last long, though, as the Great Western's Severn Tunnel opened in 1886.

The course of the old railway line is easy to see on the  OS 1:25000 map.

The Prince of Wales Bridge (M4), viewed from Black Rock

A short stroll from Black Rock brought us to Sudbrook – our destination for this walk. The Prince of Wales Bridge towers above the rooftops of the village and the vehicle noise is relentless. I suppose that the locals have learned to ignore it, but I can't imagine that they welcomed the arrival of the M4, back in 1996.

There are remains of an Iron Age fort at Sudbrook but most of its earthworks were lost to the river in the 14th and 15th centuries when the River Severn grew larger, thanks to climate change. Holy Trinity Church fared little better and today most of its churchyard has also been swallowed up.

Rather than exploring the fort, I returned to Sudbrook village for a closer look at a huge building that dominates the place.

This is the Severn Tunnel pumping station. Until the 1960s it housed six Cornish beam engines, which must have been a splendid sight. Coal to fire them was brought in on a railway that, according to my map, was laid directly above the tunnel.  I wonder whether the long-suffering residents of this street can hear the rumble of trains beneath their houses, to add to the roar from the M4?

After exploring historic industrial sites I often look up the old Ordinance Survey maps. I've circled the pumping station on this 1900 6 inch map, but notice that there used to be a second pumping station further up the railway line. It's not mentioned on any of the websites that I looked at today, which leaves me wondering why it was built. Did it, I wonder, house the original pumps before the tunnel was flooded during construction in 1879?