This post gives some beginning background to the 19th century history of the village near where we live and have made the garden. If you’re a subscriber to the blog posts you will inevitably it seems, get these local history posts as I add them. I hope that won’t annoy you too much.

“Memoir of Davies of Devauden” published 1849

Pages 17-18:

“The Fedw is inhabited by wood-colliers, mule drivers and labourers, connected principally with the wireworks of Abby Tintern, or the adjoining woods, who have encroached on the wastelands of the Duke of Beaufort and enjoy by his indulgence their little cottages and gardens unmolested. These habitations have multiplied considerably within the last few years and are a fruitful source of scholars to Devauden School…… They originally reared their turf and mud cabins amidst the rocks…..They subsist chiefly on potatoes and the coarsest kind of bread….. It was amongst these people, and on this wild heath, that the subject of my memoir took up his abode…. The benefits which he has conferred on them by his example are very apparent; their wretched huts have gradually been superseded by stone built cottages…”

Sir Thomas Philips “Life of James Davies”

“The Diocese of Llandaff in 1763” ed. John R Guy, South Wales Record Society, Cardiff 1991, page 173

“That population consists principally of small farmers, quarrymen, woodcutters and labourers, many of whom have reared their cottages amidst the woods, or upon the commons; and by great toil and perseverance , have cleared the ground from stones, furze and heath. These men hold their cottages and the small enclosures by which they are surrounded, of the Duke of Beaufort, as lord of the manor, at moderate rents, usually on life leases. Accustomed to scanty fare, inured to poverty, suffering occasionally from cold and hunger, and exposed to peculiar temptations, they have been accused of dishonest practices, and of those acts of petty fraud, which often prevail amidst such a population.”

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That was the picture I was lucky enough to start with when I began to research the history of the Veddw. Since then I have amassed piles of papers, maps and books, and spent hours in the local record office and the National Library of Wales feeling like an awful fraud. I have spent hours trying to communicate to other people the fascination of trying to discover the entire history of a small settlement on the edge of a wood. And at the end of that time I am, of course, more impressed by what I don’t know than what I do, and I am aware that a lot of what I think I know is probably terribly mistaken. Local history seems to me to be a totally tricky and elusive subject. One of my greatest problems has been failing to see or understand things that are right under my nose. Another has been being totally confused by things which I think ought to be obvious but which I then discover to be totally confusing to everyone – such as the history of enclosure.

I caused great hilarity in the pub once when I said that I’ve come to the conclusion that Devauden was not a village. Maybe I’m wrong? It’s true that it has a “village green” and is still sometimes called Devauden Green. And of course, it has a church, and until relatively recently it had a school. But I believe that for most of its existence it was a small settlement of a few odd cottages – or “turf and mud cabins,” close to other similar unfocused settlements. There is no separate map for Devauden in the maps of the Badminton Estate surveyed by Aram in 1761. The “Plan of Cottages, Lands and Woods in Newchurch East” (Devauden is in the parish of Newchurch East) is essentially a map of the Veddw. See below. It does have some bits of Devauden and another bit appears in the map of “Fairoak and Ravensnest”. Those bits – presumably put into these other maps to save space, don’t add up to a whole settlement, never mind a village.

The quote from the James Davies memoir, which identifies the source of scholars for Devauden School, refers to the Fedw, which tends to confirm this picture of the Veddw as the more significant settlement until the development of the church and school in the 19^th century had actually occurred. Even on the 1881 Ordnance Survey Map there is only a scattering of houses. In fact, there are almost more public buildings than houses – a church, school, vicarage, a pub, an inn. It looks as if by this time Devauden is servicing the surrounding settlements of the Creigiau, New Inn and the Upper Fedw, Fedw and Lower Fedw. So why did Devauden often appear on county maps before it began to take off in the 19^th century? I don’t know – it just doesn’t seem to have been a village. There are references to it on occasions as a “common” – but is this actually a reference to the Criga, also frequently termed a common? When there were turnpikes Devauden had one, but there are references to Devauden long before that.

It does seem to have been an important road junction. You can see from the sketch map for the first Ordnance Survey Map above that there are a good many roads meeting here. The road from Wentwood to Tintern, called Coal Lane beyond Devauden presumably from its use by mules carrying charcoal to the Wireworks at Tintern from the Wentwood, crosses the two turnpike roads from Chepstow to Monmouth that circle Chepstow Park Wood. Traffic must have been sufficient to cause a big muddy patch, which was no doubt the physical origin of the “green”.

Most similar local mud patches at junctions got bits pinched out of them as land for a cottage or cabin by squatters, but there is no evidence of this at Devauden. Perhaps because the traffic was so heavy? The use of the name “green” may also refer us back to the “common” association, according to Paul Courtney (“The Rural Landscape of Eastern and Lower Gwent c AD 1070 – 1750”, 1983 p345). He says that “the term ‘green’ was often applied to small areas of common or wood…. Such greens often gave their name to small squatter settlements,” – which might fit our case exactly.