The Chapman’s Ellwand: A Journey Through Newport in 1750

Act I

The Western Approach

18th-century portrait of Alexander Semple, the Scotchman

Alexander Semple “The Scotchman” (c. 1750)

His name was Alexander Semple, though along the border valleys of Monmouthshire no one called him that. To the farm wives of Wentloog, the hostlers at the coaching gates, and the magistrates sitting in petty sessions, he was simply “the Scotchman.” Trade Classification An 18th-century commercial term across Britain for travelling tally-drapers selling cloth, linens, and haberdashery on scheduled credit circuits, regardless of actual nationality.

Semple was forty-two years old, hailing originally from the Upper Ward of Lanarkshire Scottish Lowlands The southern upland territory around Biggar and Lanark, a historic heartland for itinerant weavers, packmen, and linen merchants. . He had spent eighteen years living out of an oiled canvas pack strapped across his chest and shoulders, working a seasonal tallyman’s circuit through South Wales. His hair was iron-grey, his knees hardened by miles of sunken parish tracks, and his right hand rarely left his ellwand—a smoothed ash measuring rod, precisely forty-five inches long, banded with brass at either end. To the women at cottage doorways, it was the honest measure by which he cut lengths of Irish linen, cambric, and calico; to Semple, walking alone down solitary hollow-ways, it was a heavy defensive cudgel against highway footpads and farm mastiffs.

In the heat of late June 1750, Semple was finishing an eastward collection round. He had started the circuit over in the small market town of Cardiff, crossing the ancient border at the historic crossing of Rumney Bridge. Heading toward Newport, the main thoroughfare did not strike directly across the coastal plain; instead, it swung north in a wide, sweeping arc outward to Bassaleg, skirting well clear of the vast enclosed deer parks, boundary walls, and private home grounds of the Morgan family at Tredegar House. These rough, rutted parish tracks were completely open and toll-free, maintained only by the reluctant six-day labour of local farmers, though within the decade they would be seized by Parliament and gated as official turnpike roads1.

Today's Alignment: The ancient arc around the parklands survives today along the Old Tredegar boundary via Bassaleg before meeting the 1758 Turnpike alignment.

His canvas pack was noticeably lighter than when he had set out from Cardiff, containing little more than a few remaining pieces of figured ribbon, bone lace, bone buttons, and remnant handkerchiefs. But inside his buckskin breeches, tucked deep into a buttoned fob, was the real weight: sixteen pounds of shillings, half-crowns, and copper pence collected from tenant households across the parishes of Wentloog and Bassaleg.

Every yard of lane brought a prickle of caution. Only the previous winter, the taprooms in Bassaleg had been buzzing with the news of an assault on this very road: a clerk to Mr Peter Davies, the Newport attorney Plots 98 & 102 Peter Davies, prominent Newport attorney at law, holding tenements and legal offices documented on the 1750 plan. , had been brutally beaten in broad daylight by a local yeoman named Henry Thomas John, who had made off with the clerk’s five-shilling gun2. Semple had seen the wanted notice pinned up, warning travellers that the absconder wore a drab surtout and blue shag breeches and could speak not a single word of English2. A travelling dealer carrying hard silver coin down unlit lanes between Bassaleg and Newport was an infinitely richer prize than an attorney’s clerk.

Act II

Over the Ridge to Stow Hill

Emerging from the wooded hollows of the parish road, Semple felt the slope stiffen as the track skirted along the southern edge of the ancient earthen ring of Tredegar Hill Fort, passing the quiet stone walls of Nant Coch Farm set back in its fields. At the crest of the hill, the lane met an open fork where a bleached timber guide-post pointed its carved hands along the split—one arm directing travellers down toward Bassaleg and the other toward Risca. It was the very marker post that would later give its name to the Handpost Inn, standing at a natural vantage where turnpike gates would soon be planted.

1750 reconstruction of Bassaleg Road looking towards the Handpost — **Landscape Comparison:** A reconstruction showing how present-day Bassaleg Road would have appeared to a traveller climbing northeast toward the Handpost junction. On the left sits the isolated stone homestead of Nant Coch set back within its fields, while to the right the road skirts the ancient, tree-crowned slopes below the Tredegar Hill Fort earthworks.

Following the crest of the lane along what is now Stow Hill, Semple walked across the open pasture historically set aside for the ancient Stow Fair. Held on the high ridge outside the borough liberties, the fair was a rough, rowdy seasonal gathering for horse-copers, drovers, and shearers—notorious across Monmouthshire for brawling and livestock theft.

By the roadside stood the modest stone front of the Bull Inn at Stow Stow Hill Hostelry An ancient wayside public house on Stow Hill; nineteenth-century notices show it long remained a staple drovers’ halt for grazing and stabling. . Long before nineteenth-century newspaper notices recorded its keeper John Adieu advertising stray and stolen horses left for grazing at eightpence a night4, the inn served travellers tackling the ridge, right where illicit horse-trading and the lively traffic of the fair met.

Suspected stolen horse notice at the Bull at Stow, 1841 — **Archival Significance:** Although dating to **23rd June, 1841**, this notice provides rare documentary evidence for **The Bull at Stow** in the parish of St Woollos. Placed alongside the ancient Stow Fair fields, it records the centuries-old customary practice of rural inns taking in drovers' road stock for pasture (“grass at eight-pence per night”), as well as the ongoing vulnerability of the ridge to livestock theft.

Turning along the level ridge of Stow Hill, Semple saw the massive square stone tower of St Woolos Church rise against the sky. It was a venerable church with pre-Norman origins, standing solitary on the high rural skyline rather than hemmed in by city terraces. Here, on the outer borough bounds, sat the Stow Manor Pound for stray cattle along with the rectorial tithe barn. Passing the boundary markers into the borough proper, he began the descent down Stow Hill over loose red sandstone gravel.

On his left stood the modest stone almshouses (Plot 55), founded fifty years earlier by Roger Williams to shelter six poor women of the town. (Though rebuilt on this lower ground in 1845, the charity would eventually be moved and rebuilt further up the hill in 1901, where its Victorian brick successor still stands). Almost next door sat (Plot 57), a substantial holding leased by Thomas Dumayne, Esq. Mayor of Newport Chief magistrate 1750–1754; maltster and merchant occupying a substantial house, stable, 4,000-bushel malthouse, and an acre of orchard. , who was soon to serve as Mayor of Newport. Positioned high on the ridge with sweeping views across the levels to the Bristol Channel, the compound was both a genteel residence and a bustling industrial enterprise complete with its own brewhouse, granary, and stable. From the yard behind came the rich, roasted scent of sprouted grain from Dumayne’s commercial malthouse. Capable of wetting four thousand bushels a season—close to ninety tons of barley, sufficient to brew over forty thousand gallons of ale—this was no mere tavern brewhouse, but a wholesale manufacturing operation supplying alehouses across the borough and trading river ketches bound for Bristol.

4,000 Bushels: Processing roughly 90 tons of barley each season, Dumayne's malthouse produced enough malt to brew around 45,000 gallons of beer—vastly exceeding the thirst of Newport's 1,000 residents alone.

1750 advertisement to let a house and malthouse rented by Mayor Thomas Dumayne — **Archival Significance:** Corresponding directly with **Plot 57 (“Mr Dumain”)** on the 1750 Town Plan, this notice illustrates that Newport’s municipal leaders were major wholesale producers. Wetting 4,000 bushels of grain annually represents nearly 90 imperial tons of malt per season—enough to brew roughly 40,000 to 50,000 gallons of ale. In a borough of barely 1,000 inhabitants, Dumayne was not merely supplying his own household, but operating a major regional enterprise furnishing town alehouses and the Bristol coastal trade.

Further down on the right lay the Free-School-House (Plot 70) 69 Stow Hill Endowed in 1607 by Alderman William Williams. Later the borough workhouse (1783) and house of refuge; site now beneath a car park. . Through the low boundary hedge, Semple could see the well-tended garden, though the schoolroom itself was quiet3. The previous master had vacated his post two years earlier after gaining preferment at Oxford, and notices had circulated across the county seeking a gentleman skilled in Latin grammar and the classics to take the rent-free lodging3. Semple, whose father had drilled Latin syntax into him in a Lanark parish school, looked on the silent garden with a quiet nod before adjusting his shoulder straps.

Passing the broken, weather-beaten stone base of an ancient wayside preaching cross near the corner of modern Havelock Street, the steep decline finally began to level out as the buildings crowded in.

At the foot of the hill, commanding the road where Stow Hill emptied into the head of High Street, stood the ancient fortified West Gate Medieval Town Gate The medieval western stone gatehouse and gaol spanning the roadway between Stow Hill and High Street; demolished c. 1799 to clear traffic. . Surviving until the close of the century, its low stone archway formed the physical threshold of the borough's liberties, with upper chambers that had served generations as the town gaol. To Semple's left stood The Great House (Plot 42) Tredegar Town Mansion The urban residence of the Morgan family. Converted in the early 19th c. into the Tredegar Estate Offices, later Bailey & Co.'s Bank (now NatWest). —the imposing stone town mansion of the Morgans of Tredegar. Passing under the shadowy stone portal of the West Gate, Semple stepped abruptly out of the rural approach and directly into the noise and stench of the High Street.

The West Gate: Spanned the narrow pinch-point right outside the modern Westgate Hotel. Long before the 1839 Chartist uprising, the 1794 map confirms the gatehouse still constricted all coach traffic entering town.

Act III

The Clamour of High Street

The scent of roasting grain from Dumayne's malthouse gave way to the foul, damp reek of the town. High Street in 1750 was narrow, noisy, and utterly devoid of drainage. It was market day, and the thoroughfare was an obstacle course of open refuse gutters, domestic dunghills piled outside doorways, and livestock. Farmers had tethered sheep, pigs, and cattle to cellar posts and door rings, creating the very bottlenecks that would draw complaints for over a century until the roadway was finally widened. In the middle of the street stood the timber Market House, surrounded by butter-wives and produce sellers, while the borough bellman rang his brass handbell to cry mayoral bylaws, missing heifers, and the town's sporting bouts.

Before plunging deeper into the throng, Semple turned aside down narrow Skinner Street toward the riverfront (Plot 87). His canvas pack was nearly stripped bare, and the quayside end of the lane—backing directly onto the great Tredegar warehouse at the water's edge—was the domain of Mr Adam Barber Skinner Street Burgess Merchant holding Plot 87 near the river wharves; victim of a notable 1746 housebreaking involving valuable silver and imported cloth. . Semple called at the yard seeking word of fresh linen bales expected on the Bristol trows, but found the household still wary of visiting strangers. Barely three years earlier, Barber’s home had been broken into and stripped of silver buckles, new coat-buttons, and gold coin by a neighbourhood maidservant8. When the girl was apprehended, she was found with an astonishing hoard of stolen finery—gowns of lustrous blue paduasoy silk, a figured dimity petticoat boasting eleven breadths, and fine cambric aprons brought over the hills from Brecon by the Caerleon carrier8. Finding no wholesale trade to be done that morning, Semple retraced his steps up the lane, re-entering High Street where the market traffic was at its height.

1747 Burglary Notice for Adam Barber on High Street — **Archival Significance:** Corroborates **Plot 87 (“Mr Adam Barber”)** on the 1750 plan three years prior to the survey. The notice provides an inventory of luxury material culture in Georgian Newport, illustrating the domestic wealth of prominent burgesses through silver regalia, imported silks (*paduasoy*), and costly linens. Crucially, the memorandum confirms the overland carrier network connecting inland Brecon directly down to the quayside at Caerleon.

Returning up Skinner Street into the High Street press, Semple passed the corner burgage of Elizabeth Nicholas (Plot 92) High Street Freeholder Occupied Plot 92 at the corner of Griffin Lane; a later 1754 notice highlights the risks of hitching valuable pack-horses outside street frontages. at the entrance to Griffin Lane. Outside dwellings like hers, country carriers and drovers routinely tethered their mounts to cellar posts and iron door rings while bargaining within. It was a risky convenience: only a few years later, Elizabeth would advertise a half-guinea reward for her own dark-grey pack mare, snatched saddle and bridle straight from her front door in broad daylight and trailed through an illicit horse-coping ring stretching all the way to Crickhowell and West Wales9. Seeing several weary nags hitched unattended along the causeway, Semple kept a tight grip on his ellwand and pack straps as he moved through the throng.

1754 Horse Theft Notice by Elizabeth Nicholas — **Archival Significance:** Corroborates **Plot 92 (“Elizabeth Nicholas”)** on the 1750 plan at the corner of Griffin Lane and High Street. Beyond confirming her residence, the advertisement illustrates the routine presence of pack-horses outside High Street tenements and reveals an interconnected criminal network of horse-thieves and copers moving stolen stock north into Breconshire and west into Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire.

Semple pushed past the shouting crowds, taking his pack down the street to hawk his wares. He passed the Fleur de Luce (Plot 36) Ye Olde Murenger Ye Olde Murenger House is a 19th-century pub with a mock Tudor front. It is named after the medieval job of a murenger but it is believed the house of the murenger was further down the street. , and made for The Red Cow (Plot X) The Greyhound Hotel Licensed alehouse of the Widow Hughes. Nos. 48–49 High Street preserve this modest pre-industrial three-storey scale. , run by the Widow Hughes. Occupying the site of today's Greyhound at Nos. 48–49 High Street, this was an unpretentious, three-storey vernacular alehouse. Its low-ceilinged rooms and narrow burgage shell—which may well survive within the core of those very buildings today—were far more welcoming to a Scotchman's purse. Here, for a few coppers, he could get a bowl of hot pottage and a secure corner to rest his pack.

Just up the street at (Plot 108), the town's premier Tredegar-owned coaching inn was overflowing due to a massive four-day cockfighting tournament between the Gentlemen of Monmouthshire and the Gentlemen of Glamorganshire5. Thirty-one cocks a side were fighting in the Main for three guineas a battle, with a staggering sixty guineas riding on the deciding match5. For an ordinary working man or labourer earning five or six shillings a week, sixty guineas was a small fortune—more than four years of back-breaking manual labour wagered on the clash of feathered spurs5.

Act IV

Diverting from the Bridge: The Castle to Crindau

Leaving the noisy crowd outside the King's Head behind, Semple continued down the slope toward the river quarter. Further along the eastern frontage sat the legal chambers of Thomas Phillips, Gent. (Plot 81) Attorney & Turnpike Clerk Confidential agent to the Tredegar estate; later appointed Clerk to the Trustees of the Newport Turnpike District. . As confidential solicitor to the Morgans of Tredegar, Phillips was one of the borough’s crucial legal fixers, overseeing the complex network of manorial tenancies, timber rights, and ninety-nine-year leases that governed town property. Semple had no dealings with attorneys, but within the decade Phillips would hold direct authority over the chapman’s very living: following the First Monmouthshire Turnpike Act of 1758, it was Phillips who would summon county magistrates to the King’s Head as Clerk to the Newport-Pike Trustees, drafting the orders to erect toll bars and gate the open parish tracks Semple had walked that morning10.

1760 Newport-Pike Trustees Meeting Notice signed by Thomas Phillips — **Archival Significance:** Connects **Plot 81 (“Thomas Phillips Gent”)** directly to the institutional enclosure of Monmouthshire’s highway network following the First Turnpike Act of 1758. As Clerk to the Trustees, Phillips conducted the administrative machinery that erected gates at the Handpost and Marshes Gate, while confirming **The King’s Head (Plot 108)** as the municipal and civic meeting place of local county government.

By mid-afternoon, Semple was approaching the lower end of the thoroughfare where the roadway funnelled between the Castle walls and the river. Here, fronting the northern entrance to town opposite Castle Green, stood the substantial urban holding of Charles Van, Esq. (Plot 5) Llanwern Gentry Town holding of Charles Van of Llanwern House; county magistrate, sportsman, and MP who kept kennels on the Castle approach. . While Semple kept a tight grip on his ellwand against fierce farm curs, the kennels behind Van’s town house sheltered beasts of a far gentler, aristocratic breed. An avid field sportsman, Van’s gun dogs were the pride of the county—though not safe from town dog-thieves, who would later spirit away his liver-eared pointer Sappho and spaniels Rover and Phillis, provoking a furious two-guinea reward for their return11.

1758 Stolen Gun Dogs notice by Charles Van, Esq. — **Archival Significance:** Corroborates **Plot 5 (“Charles Van Esq”)** on the 1750 plan at the northern head of High Street near Castle Green. Charles Van of Llanwern House (later MP for Brecon) maintained this urban base alongside his country seat. The notice illustrates the gentry sporting culture of pre-industrial Newport, preserving the names and breeds (*Sappho*, *Rover*, and *Phillis*) of mid-18th-century pedigree pointers and spaniels.

Just across the roadway where the ground dipped toward the river approach—known in later decades as “The Dip”—stood the corner plot (Plot 110), containing the convenient house and shop belonging to Mr John Thomas, advertised to let that year along with twelve acres of prime grazing meadow on the levels6.

1750 Shop To Lett Notice — **Archival Significance:** Correlates with **Plot 110 (“Mr John Thomas”)** situated strategically at the northern funnel of High Street where the roadway branched towards the river bridge and Castle. The holding exemplifies the dual agro-commercial economy of 18th-century Newport, combining retail premises on the main thoroughfare with twelve acres of valuable alluvial marsh grazing on the Caldicot or Wentloog levels.

The obvious post-road to Caerleon crossed the wooden bridge, but taking it meant tackling the brutal, exhausting climb straight up the sheer flank of Christchurch Hill. For a foot-pedlar carrying a heavy pack and pocketfuls of coin, Semple preferred a flatter northern detour, even though it meant skirting the fortified northern edge of town.

Turning sharp left away from the bridge into narrow Thomas Street Birthplace of John Frost A narrow back lane running behind High Street tenements to Mill Street. The Chartist leader John Frost was born here at the Royal Oak in 1784. , Semple skirted behind the rear burgages toward the river mill. Along this quiet back lane sat Plot 28 Thomas Street Workshop Premises of John Frost, master shoemaker; grandfather of the 1839 Chartist leader. , the dwelling and workshop of the cordwainer John Frost Master Cordwainer Documented 1750 burgage holder; placed notices in 1756 seeking an absconded apprentice clad in homespun woollens. . Thirty-four years before his grandson and namesake was born on this same street at the Royal Oak—destined to lead thousands of armed Chartists down the town’s main thoroughfare—the elder Frost was busy crafting stout leather boots for drovers and farmers. His workshop had its trials: only a few years later, Frost would advertise in the county papers for his runaway seventeen-year-old apprentice, John Williams, who had vanished without warning dressed head-to-toe in coarse brown homespun cloth12. For an itinerant packman carrying yards of smooth factory linen and finished Manchester haberdashery, the rough country homespun of a runaway apprentice was a familiar reminder of the everyday working cloth of the border valleys.

1756 Runaway apprentice notice by John Frost, shoemaker — **Archival Significance:** Corroborates **Plot 28 (“John Frost”)** on the 1750 plan, demonstrating that the Frost family was already established along Thomas Street more than three decades before Chartist leader John Frost was born there in 1784. The advertisement identifies his trade as a master shoemaker and preserves a description of ordinary provincial working attire: an apprentice’s suit made entirely of coarse domestic “Home-made Cloth.”

Following the track down to Mill Street, Semple arrived tucked directly beneath the towers of the semi-ruinous medieval castle, where the tidal town mill churned steadily in its millpond. Beyond the mill, the town ended. Passing through the Marshes Gate—the northern borough toll boundary where a checkpoint would later stand—Semple stepped out onto Marshes Road, following what is now the modern Malpas Road corridor.

In 1750, this was an unpaved, desolate track cutting across open tidal flats. To his left, the road hugged the natural contour of the land just below the slopes of present-day Brynglas, keeping to firmer ground while the sodden, reed-choked marshes and the winding Malpas Brook lay out to his right. Up ahead, perched safely on a slight rise above the marshline, stood Crindau House Circa 1318 Manor Ancient stone manor house preserving 14th-century fabric, historically safe from the tidal surge of the Usk levels. , an ancient stone manor house with origins stretching back to the early 14th century, keeping watch over the low meadows.

Act V

Malpas House to Caerleon

Beyond Crindau, the lower tracks were notoriously boggy, saturated whenever spring tides pushed up the river. Semple took the older, higher alignment of the road, climbing gradually along the bank to avoid having his boots sucked into the clay.

1750 reconstruction of the ancient Malpas Road winding towards St Mary's Church — **Landscape Comparison:** An artistic reconstruction depicting the original course of the road between Crindau House and St Mary’s Church. Rather than descending into the marshy fields around Malpas Brook, the ancient trackway hugs the rising hillside beneath modern Brynglas, offering a firm, gravelled contour path toward the venerable stone tower of Malpas Church on the horizon.

The track brought him into the quiet parish of Malpas. St Mary’s Church stood on its knoll, a small, venerable stone chapel preserving the round arches of its original 12th-century Cluniac priory cell, long before Victorian restorers swept the medieval fabric away to rebuild it in the 1840s.

A short distance past the church lay Malpas House, a quiet gentry seat. Semple continued past the turning to call at the estate’s kitchen quarters, successfully bargaining away his last lengths of ribbon and sewing thread to the domestic maids, before doubling back to the junction. (The Three Horseshoes pub would later serve travellers at this exact crossing).

Malpas House: There are records of Malpas being a parish but Malpas House itself wasn't mentioned until the early 19th century so it's uncertain if it was there in 1750.

Semple turned eastward onto the track known today as Pilmawr Road. This was ancient ground: an elevated ridgeway alignment dating back to Roman legionary patrols moving between Caerleon and western forts. The road plunged down toward Park-y-Pill (called Malpas Pill in the 1770 Turnpike Act), a tidal creek off the Usk where small coastal vessels had long been built and repaired, before climbing again along the higher contour above the river loops.

As dusk settled, the roofs of Caerleon appeared below. Descending into the ancient borough, Semple bypassed the timber bridge and headed for the warmth of the town's oldest quayside alehouses. Whether bedding down under the timber rafters of the Hanbury Arms or the Olde Bull Historic Riverfront Inns The Olde Bull (advertised by 1730) and the Hanbury Arms (incorporating ancient tower fabric) catered to river pilots, masters, and carters. —which had already been quenching the thirst of river pilots and carters for decades—he could finally slide the heavy pack from his shoulders, unbuckle his coin purse, and rest his ellwand against the hearth.

The Chapman’s Ellwand

The Western Approach

Assault & Robbery on the Bassaleg Road

Over the Ridge to Stow Hill

Historical Reconstruction • The Bassaleg Road

Horse Theft & Pasture at the Bull at Stow

Commercial Premises & Trade Tenancies

The Clamour of High Street

Housebreaking & Luxury Textiles at Adam Barber’s

Horse Theft at the Door of Elizabeth Nicholas

A Cock-Match at The King’s Head

Historical Reconstruction • The King’s Head & High Street Market

Diverting from the Bridge: The Castle to Crindau

The Newport-Pike Trust at The King’s Head

Stolen Sporting Dogs of Charles Van, Esq.

A Convenient House and Shop with Meadow-Ground

Runaway Apprentice of John Frost, Shoemaker

Malpas House to Caerleon

Historical Reconstruction • The Old Malpas Road

Plan of the Town and Borough of Newport (c. 1750)

The 10 Waypoints of Semple’s Trek

Complete Burgage Plot Directory

Notes & Archival References