THIS passage forms part of historian Fred Hando’s journey through Gwent. It begins at the remains of a former Norman outpost in Newcastle in Monmouthshire.

LIKE Twyn Tudor at Mynyddisleyn, this tump was peopled with many a spirit, and thee folk had relatives in the parish. Some of the relatives, fierce female tree-dwellers, lived in an extraordinary oak tree. When Archdeacon Coxe visited Newcastle in 1800, he was much impressed by this venerable relic, one of the largest branches of which, broken off in a violent storm, had yielded fifteen cart-loads of firewood.

The hamadryads of the Newcastle Oak wielded imperious powers. One villager breaking off a bough, broke his arm; another fractured his leg; and when the last branches fell in a great gale the cottagers who used any of the wood in their fireplaces set their cottages alight. My sketch, copied from Coxe's History of Monmouthshire, shows the tree as it was in 1800.

Other relatives of the tump sprites were less anti-social. They acted as attendant spirits of the seven springs and the wishing well, and while the springs cured rheumatism, the well granted their wishes to the maidens who threw pins into its water.

Yet another spirit lived in the well inside the Castle Farmhouse. Before this well was covered over, an old lady had seen on several occasions a ghost from the depths of the well.

It was not to view any of these items that we had climbed to Newcastle. Like many other Monmouthshire folk, we had tried each year to see the three famous flowering trees of our county - the Handkerchief tree of Mounton, the Judas tree of Moyne's Court (now, alas no more) and the Wistaria of Newcastle. I was anxious to see the effect of the blizzards on the Wistaria.

Acknowledged by botanists to be oldest and most remarkable of all Wistarias, it was, until a few years back, a very beautiful ornament to the ancient inn. Until 1815 this hostelry was the King's Head, but when Colonel Evans returned from Waterloo he had the name changed to the Wellington Arms. The Wisteria was then a century and a half old. In other words, this Wisteria was planted, as Mr Piddington of Monmouth School reminds us, long before the birth of Caspar Wistar in whose honour the genus was named.

When I knew it first, the trunk was five feet in girth and at its bifurcation was sealed annually with concrete. Branches led left along the inn and stable walls, and right along the walls of the courtroom for the inn was once used for the petty sessions.

Great nails driven into the walls to support it, were imbedded and known locally as 'ingrowing nails'. Stout oak branches were added and this magnificent shrub in mid-May, along the whole of its one hundred and fifty feet, was draped with pedant flower clusters, soft on outline, hazy in mauve hue, their fragrance drifting over the hamlet.

With sadness I report that our Wistaria displays but a show of its former glory. Bravely it has struggled again into meagre leafage and blossom, and it may yet, with a succession of warm summers and mild winters, recover completely. Maybe the water-sprites and tree-nymphs of Newcastle will take a hand in its rehabilitation.

A delectable destination from any direction is Skenfrith. Come down to it across the rich red lands from Ross; climb out of Monmouth to Newcastle and descend that shallowed pitch; take the magnificent way from Llantilio Crosseny via White Castle; travel the good road from Abergavenny; or approach by the glamourous route from Grosmont. Each way is good; each gives the warm mounting-up of excitement.

There is another road. A green road this, which I had better not recommend. If I tell you that it is a sequestered, secrete narrow road, canopied for miles, ending in a buzzard's view of Skenfrith, perhaps that will deter you from seeking it.

What do you find at journey's end? Contrasting with Grosmont and Whitecastle, Skenfrith - these are the Three Towns (y Tair Tref) - sleeps in a wide green valley. Comely beyond words, the hamlet is river-blessed. Its name implied 'the river meadow of Cynfraeth,' and I know nothing of that sixth century chieftan except that he always had an eye for a site.

This is an extract from Hando’s Gwent, Volume One, edited by Chris Barber.