The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 547, May 19, 1832

Here is one of the ivy-mantled relics that lend even a charm to romantic nature on the banks of the Wye. Its shattered tower and crumbling wall, combine with her wild luxuriance, to form a scene of great picturesque beauty, though, as Gilpin observes, the scene wants accompaniments to give it grandeur.
The present demolished state of the Castle is referred to the Royalist Governors of Hereford, by whose orders it was burnt to the bare walls during the reign of Charles I. in the absence of its then possessor, Sir J. Brydges.
The scenery of the WYE, at this point is thus described by tourists: From Hereford to Ross, its features occasionally assume greater boldness; though more frequently their aspect is placid; but at the latter town wholly emerging from its state of repose, it resumes the brightness and rapidity of its primitive character, as it forms the admired curve which the churchyard of Ross commands. The celebrated spire of Ross church, peeping over a noble row of elms, here fronts the ruined Castle of Wilton, beneath the arches of whose bridge, the Wye flows through a charming succession of meadows, encircling at last the lofty and well-wooded hill, crowned with the majestic fragments of Gooderich Castle, and opposed by the waving eminences of the forest of Dean. The mighty pile, or peninsula, of Symonds' Rock succeeds, round which the river flows in a circuit of seven miles, though the opposite points of the isthmus are only one mile asunder. Shortly afterwards, the Wye quits the county, and enters Monmouthshire at the New Wear.
We met with nothing for some time during our voyage but grand, woody banks, one rising behind another; appearing and vanishing by turns, as we doubled the several capes. But though no particular objects characterized these different scenes, yet they afforded great variety of pleasing views, both as we wound round the several promontories, which discovered new beauties as each scene opened, and when we kept the same scene a longer time in view, stretching along some lengthened reach, where the river is formed into an irregular vista by hills shooting out beyond each other and going off in perspective.