Mounton

Mounton

St. Andoenus' Church, Mounton
Mounton
 Mounton shown within Monmouthshire
OS grid referenceST513930
Principal areaMonmouthshire
Ceremonial countyGwent
CountryWales
Sovereign stateUnited Kingdom
Post town CHEPSTOW
Postcode district NP16
Dialling code 01291
Police Gwent
Fire South Wales
Ambulance Welsh
EU Parliament Wales
UK ParliamentMonmouth
List of places
UK
Wales
Monmouthshire

Coordinates: 51°38′10″N 2°42′13″W / 51.6361°N 2.7036°W / 51.6361; -2.7036

Mounton is a hamlet in Monmouthshire, south east Wales, United Kingdom, located two miles west of Chepstow in a rural setting.

The parish was originally part of the holdings of Chepstow Priory, with the name Monktown. It has a tiny parish church dedicated to St. Andoenus, which was almost wholly rebuilt in 1880 and which lies in the Parish of Mathern and Mounton with St Pierre.[1]

St. Andoenus has been identified by some with St. Owen, and by others as an obscure Greek saint. It has been suggested that he was initially a 7th-century French scribe, but became Bishop of Rouen and Chancellor to three French monarchs. He is represented in the Grouped Parish logo by the quill of the scribe.

The furnishings in the Sanctuary are mainly a memorial to Capt. Ian Oswald Lidell, VC, 5th Battalion Coldstream Guards, killed in action in 1945. The stained glass windows are memorials to the Evill and Bragington families. One of the gravestones, to a Christopher Cooper who died on 8 April 1680, indicates that the churchyard is much older than the present church building.[2]

Until the late 19th century the village had three water mills, producing paper, carpets and cloth.[3] These were called Lady Mill, Lark Mill and Linnet Mill. The last owner, John Birt, closed the mills down in 1876 after being accused of polluting Mounton Brook.[4] According to Fred Hando one of the mills produced the paper used for Bank of England notes,[5] but a monograph by local historian Ivor Waters states that they "rarely made anything but brown and blue packing paper", using old rags, rope and straw as raw materials.[4]

Mounton House, now a special school for boys, was built as a country house in the Arts and Crafts style in 1914 by Henry Avray Tipping, a leading garden designer and writer, assisted by local architect Eric Francis.

Robin Williams, coach to Great Britain's 2012 Olympic women's pairs rowing champions Helen Glover and Heather Stanning, is from Mounton. He learnt to row at Monmouth School and went on to win world silver and bronze medals and coached Cambridge to seven Boat Race wins. His GB pair won world gold in a new world record at the world championships in Amsterdam in August 2014.

References

  1. ↑ "St Andoenus, Mounton" at churchinwales.org.uk
  2. ↑ "MOUNTON, ST ANDOENUS" at churchinwales.org.uk
  3. ↑ Sir Joseph Bradney, A History of Monmouthshire: The Hundred of Caldicot, 1933
  4. 1 2 Ivor Waters, Mounton Valley Paper Mills, Chepstow Society, 1978
  5. ↑ Hando, F.J., (1944) "The Pleasant Land of Gwent" - Chapter Eleven, Mathern, Moynes Court and Mounton, R. H. Johns, Newport.
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