In the neighbourhood of the lake north-eastward, and near the head of the Lleveny brook, which empties itself into the pool, I find described the ruins of Blaen-Lleveny Castle. It was fortified by Peter FitzHerbert, descended of Bernard de Newmarch, lord of Brecon, according to the opinion of some antiquaries, upon the site of the Roman Loventium.
The road soon descends to the fine vale of Brecon, grandly accompanied by a semicircular range of mountains; where, proudly rising in superior majesty, the Van rears its furrowed and bipartite summit high above the clouds. Advancing, cultivation takes a more extensive sweep, and picturesque disposition becomes frequent. The Usk flowing round the foot of the Bwlch, cloathed with the extensive plantations of Buckland-house, salutes the beholder with renewed attractions; and farther up the vale laves the charming woody eminence of Peterstone in its sinuous career.
On the left of the road, about five miles from Brecon, is a stone pillar, six feet in height, and nearly cylindrical; on which is an inscription that Camden read, N--- FILIUS VICTORINI, but which is now almost obliterated. He supposes it a monument of later ages than the Romans, although inscribed with their characters, and wearing the general appearance of a Roman cippus. In the parish of Llahn Hamwalch, standing on the summit of a hill near the church, (which is to the left of the road a little beyond the former monument) I find described St. Iltut’s hermitage, composed of four large flat stones; three of which, standing upright, are surmounted by the fourth, so as to form a sort of hut, eight feet long, four wide, and nearly the same in height. This kind of monument is called a Kist-vaen, a variety of the Cromlech order, and supposed to have been applied to the same purposes.
Brecon is delightfully situated upon a gentle swell above the Usk, overlooking a fertile highly-cultivated valley enlivened with numerous seats, and enriched with several sylvan knolls. On one side of the town, beneath the majestic hanging groves of the priory, the impetuous Hondy loudly murmurs, and unites with the Usk a small distance beyond its handsome bridge. Though the town boasts many capital residences, yet, encumbered by a number of mean hovels even in its principal situations, and deficient in regulations of cleanliness, it fails to create any idea of importance. Its once magnificent castle is now curtailed to a very insignificant ruin; and that little is so choaked up with miserable habitations, as to exhibit no token of antique grandeur: some broken walls and a solitary tower compose its remains.
Brecon Castle was founded by Bernard de Newmarch in the reign of William Rufus. Llewelyn prince of Wales besieged it when asserting the rights of his ancestry and friends, but without success. Passing through the hands of the Braoses and Bohuns, it fell to the king-making Buckingham, when it became the seat of chivalric splendour. To his care Dr. Morton, bishop of Ely, was committed by Richard the Third; and the remaining turret is still called Ely tower by the natives, and described to have been his prison. Buckingham, fired with resentment by the ingratitude of Richard, whom he had raised to power, contrived, with his prisoner, in this place, the means of his overthrow. The plot succeeded, but the duke was betrayed and taken before its completion, and lost his head: the more wary priest retired in secresy during its operation, and preserved his to wear the metropolitan mitre in the ensuing reign. Bernard also founded a Benedictine priory for six monks westward of the town; it was dedicated to St. John, subordinate to Battle abbey in Sussex, and became collegiate under Henry the Eighth. The church is a grand cruciform building, 200 feet in length by 60 in width, and has an embattled tower 90 feet high rising from the centre of the building. A cloister extends from the church to the priory-house; where the tourist, as he paces the refectory, or great dining-room, may speculate on monkish carousals, where blue-eyed nuns, were jovially toasted, and secret confessions anticipated.
But the most fascinating attraction of the town is its two delightful walks: the one traced on the margin of the noble Usk; the other, called the priory walk, a luxuriant grove impendent over the brawling Hondy, once assigned to the meditations of monkish fraud, but now more happily applied to the use of the townspeople, and enlivened on fine evenings by a brilliant promenade of Cambrian beauties.
This town, built on the site of a Roman station, [330] was originally called Aber-Hondy. After the departure of the Romans, the lordship of Brecon remained in the hands of the Britons till the reign of William Rufus; when Bernard de Newmarch, a Norman baron of great skill and prowess, having assembled a large body of troops, made a successful inroad into the country, killed the British chief Bledhyn ap Maenyrch, and retailed his son prisoner in Brecon castle during his life; though he, at the same time, allowed him a nominal share of his father’s territories. He then fortified the town with a castle, and an encircling wall, having three gates; and further strengthened his cause by taking to wife Nesta, grand-daughter of Gruffyth prince of Wales.
A road passing from Brecon through Llandovery to Llandilo, in Caermarthenshire, we did not travel; but find it described as highly picturesque, and otherwise interesting. For several miles it traverses an undulating district enlivened by the Usk; which now, approaching its source in the Trecastle hills, assumes all the impetuosity of a mountain torrent. The spacious lawns, long avenues of trees, and extensive plantations of Penbont, grace the bonders of the stream about three miles from Brecon; and on the left of the road, a small distance further, appear the trifling remains of Davenock castle. Trecastle, ten miles from Brecon, a small village but possessing a good inn, is deprived of every vestige of its ancient fortification. From this place the road winds for nine miles to Llandovery, in a deep valley, between the mountains, called Cwm-Dwr, a romantic pass watered by a lively stream, and dotted with numerous cottages, whose fertile hollow is beautifully contrasted by the wild aspect of the impendent heights. Llandovery is a small irregular town, nearly encompassed by rivulets, and only to be noticed by the picturesque traveller for the small ruins of its ivy-mantled castle. The road then continues to Llandilo on a high terrace, ornamented on the right by the groves of Taliaris and Abermarle parks, and overlooking the upper vale of Towey, rich in cultivation and the beauty of its stream.
On the road to Hereford from Brecon, about seven miles, is Brunlyss Castle; the principal and almost only feature of which is a high round tower on an artificial mount. Its foundation is uncertain, but cannot be later than the first settlement of the Normans in the county. There is a curious circumstance connected with an incident in the history of this castle, which I think very probably suggested the character of Faulconbridge in Shakespeare’s play of King John. The acknowledged son and heir of Bernard de Newmarch and his wife Nesta was Mahel, a dauntless, youth, who, after the death of Bernard, having affronted a paramour of his mother’s, and upbraided the matron herself, became in a most extraordinary manner deprived of his inheritance. Nesta, enraged at the interference of her son in her tender arrangements, presented herself before Henry the Second, and solemnly made oath that he was not the son of Bernard lord of Breton; but was begotten by a Cambrian warrior, thereby proclaiming her son a bastard, and satisfying her revenge, though at the expence of every maternal tie and of the strongest sentiments of female worth. Bernard’s estates, in consequence, fell to his daughter Sibyl wife of Milo earl of Hereford; and Mahel, ejected from his patrimony, became a lawless desperado. Once, as he was on a predatory excursion over the domains of David Fitzgerald, bishop of St. David’s, he was entertained by Walter de Clifford in Brunlyss Castle for one night; when the building took fire, and he, in endeavouring to escape, was crushed to death by the falling of a stone.
Hay, a small populous town on this road, at the extremity of the principality, occupies an eminence near the banks of the Wye, and was formerly graced with a fine castle, which is now reduced to a few broken walls; but Clifford, a mile or two further, on the upper road to Hereford, still exhibits the majestic remains of its castle, crowning a bold hill which towers above the river, and has been long renowned as having been the birth-place of the lovely, but frail fair Rosamond.