Monmouth Accommodation

More About Monmouth

Walk over the Monnow Bridge first, because there is nothing else like it. It is a medieval crossing with its fortified gate tower still standing on the bridge itself, and no other bridge in Britain has kept one. Agincourt Square at the top of the town is where the market and the old Shire Hall are.

Climb the Kymin in the afternoon, a wooded hill above the town with a Georgian round house and a naval temple on top. The hill is free and open all year; the round house itself opens on set days in season. Canoes go down the Wye from here, Symonds Yat is five miles north, and Tintern and Chepstow are strung out below.

It is a border town in the proper sense: England begins at the far bank, the Forest of Dean is fifteen minutes away, and Ross-on-Wye, Abergavenny and Chepstow all sit within half an hour. The Wye Valley itself does the rest — the whole gorge from here to Chepstow is protected, under the name Wye Valley National Landscape since 2023, and the Offa’s Dyke and Wye Valley paths run the length of it.

Monmouth began as a Roman fort at the river crossing and became a Norman castle town. Henry V was born in that castle in 1386, and his statue has looked down from the Shire Hall since 1792.

The Monnow Bridge went up at the end of the 1200s and its gate tower was added soon after, first as a toll point and then as a defence. No other fortified bridge in Britain still carries its tower on the bridge itself.

The town grew rich on wool, then on iron and wire from the works down the valley. In the seventeen hundreds it became the overnight stop on the Wye Tour, when the fashion for picturesque scenery sent travellers down the river towards Tintern.

The town owns a remarkable thing it cannot show you at the moment. Lady Llangattock, mother of Charles Rolls of Rolls-Royce, left Monmouth her Nelson collection in 1923, including the admiral’s own sword and the ones surrendered at Trafalgar.

It is between homes. The Shire Hall closed to visitors at the end of 2025 for a £2.8 million rebuild, and the collection goes on show there when it reopens, which is expected in early 2027.

Agincourt Square is worth standing in anyway. Henry V looks down from the front of the Shire Hall and Charles Rolls stands below him holding a model aeroplane, and the market runs along the wide top end of Monnow Street.