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Mother Jones

Mary G. Harris Jones (1837 (baptized) – November 30, 1930), known as Mother Jones from 1897 onward, was an Irish-born American labor organizer, former schoolteacher, and dressmaker who became a prominent union organizer, community organizer, and activist. She helped coordinate major strikes, secure bans on child labor, and co-founded the socialist trade union, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW).

After Jones's husband and four children all died of yellow fever in 1867 and her dress shop was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, she became an organizer for the Knights of Labor and the United Mine Workers union. In 1902, she was called "the most dangerous woman in America" for her success in organizing miners and their families against the mine owners. In 1903, to protest the lax enforcement of the child labor laws in the Pennsylvania mines and silk mills, she organized a children's march from Philadelphia to the home of President Theodore Roosevelt in New York.

Early life
Mary G. Harris was born on the north side of Cork, the daughter of Catholic tenant farmers Richard Harris and Ellen (née Cotter) Harris. Her exact date of birth is uncertain; she was baptized on August 1, 1837. Harris and her family were victims of the Great Famine, as were many other Irish families. The famine drove more than a million families, including the Harrises, to immigrate to North America, as Harris's family did when Harris was 10.

Formative years
Mary was a teenager when her family immigrated to Canada. In Canada (and later in the United States), the Harris family were victims of discrimination due to their immigrant status as well as their Catholic faith and Irish heritage. Mary received an education in Toronto at the Toronto Normal School, which was tuition-free and even paid a stipend to each student of one dollar per week for every semester completed. Mary did not graduate from the Toronto Normal School, but she was able to undergo enough training to take a teaching position at a convent in Monroe, Michigan, on August 31, 1859 at the age of 23. She was paid eight dollars per month, but the school was described as a "depressing place". After tiring of her assumed profession, she moved first to Chicago and then to Memphis, where in 1861 she married George E. Jones, a member and organizer of the National Union of Iron Moulders, which later became the International Molders and Foundry Workers Union of North America, which represented workers who specialized in building and repairing steam engines, mills, and other manufactured goods. Considering that Mary's husband was providing enough income to support the household, she altered her labor to housekeeping.

In 1867, Jones lost her husband and their four children, three girls and a boy all under the age of five, in 1867, during a yellow fever epidemic in Memphis. After that loss, she returned to Chicago to open another dressmaking business. She did work for members of Chicago's upper class in the 1870s and 1880s. In 1871, four years after the death of her family, Jones lost her home, shop, and possessions in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. Jones, like many others, helped rebuild the city. According to her autobiography, this led to her joining the Knights of Labor. Jones started organizing strikes. At first the strikes and protests failed, sometimes ending with police shooting at and killing protesters. Most members of the Knights were men, and by the middle of the 1870s, member numbers leaped to more than a million, becoming the largest labor organization in the United States. The Haymarket Affair of 1886 and the fear of anarchism and social change incited by union organizations resulted in the demise of the Knights of Labor when an unknown person threw a bomb into an altercation between the Chicago police and workers on strike. Once the Knights ceased to exist, Mary Jones became involved mainly with the United Mine Workers (UMW). She frequently led UMW strikers in picketing and encouraged striking workers to stay on strike when management brought in strike-breakers and militias. She believed that "working men deserved a wage that would allow women to stay home to care for their kids." Around this time, strikes were getting better organized and started to produce greater results, such as better pay for the workers. Active as an organizer and educator in strikes nationwide, she was involved particularly with the UMW and the Socialist Party of America. As a union organizer, she gained prominence for organizing the wives and children of striking workers in demonstrations on their behalf. She was termed "the most dangerous woman in America" by a West Virginian district attorney, Reese Blizzard, in 1902 at her trial for ignoring an injunction banning meetings by striking miners. "There sits the most dangerous woman in America", announced Blizzard. "She comes into a state where peace and prosperity reign... crooks her finger, [and] twenty thousand contented men lay down their tools and walk out."

Jones was ideologically separated from many female activists of her day due to her lack of commitment to the cause of women's suffrage. She was quoted as saying that "you don't need the vote to raise hell!" She opposed many of the activists because she believed it was more important to advocate for the working class than to advocate for women. When some suffragists accused her of being anti-women's rights, she replied, "I'm not an anti to anything which brings freedom to my class."

Jones was known as a charismatic and effective speaker throughout her career. Occasionally she would include props, visual aids, and dramatic stunts in her speeches. Her talks usually involved the relating of some personal tale in which she invariably "showed up" one form of authority or another. Mother Jones reportedly spoke in a pleasant-sounding brogue that projected well. When she grew excited, her voice dropped in pitch.

By age 60, Jones had assumed the persona of "Mother Jones" by claiming to be older than she was, wearing outdated black dresses, and referring to the male workers that she helped as "her boys." The first reference to her in print as Mother Jones was in 1897.

"March of the Mill Children"
In 1901, workers in Pennsylvania's silk mills went on strike. Many of them were young girls demanding to be paid adult wages. The 1900 census had revealed that one sixth of American children under the age of sixteen were employed. John Mitchell, the president of the UMWA, brought Mother Jones to northeastern Pennsylvania in the months of February and September to encourage unity among striking workers. To do so, she encouraged the wives of the workers to organize into a group that would wield brooms, beat on tin pans, and shout "join the union!" She felt that wives had an important role to play as the nurturers and motivators of the striking men, but not as fellow workers. She claimed that the young girls working in the mills were being robbed and demoralized. She felt that the rich were denying these children the right to go to school in order to be able to pay for their own children's college tuitions.

To enforce worker solidarity, Jones traveled to the silk mills in New Jersey and returned to Pennsylvania to report that the conditions she observed there were much better. She stated that "the child labor law is better enforced for one thing and there are more men at work than seen in the mills here." In response to the strike, mill owners claimed that if the workers insisted on a wage scale, they would not be able to do business while paying adult wages and would be forced to close. Jones encouraged the workers to accept a settlement. Although she agreed to a settlement that sent the young girls back to the mills, she continued to fight child labor for the rest of her life.

In 1903, Jones organized children who were working in mills and mines to participate in her famous "March of the Mill Children" from Kensington, Philadelphia, to the summer house (and Summer White House) of President Theodore Roosevelt on Long Island (in Oyster Bay, New York). They had banners demanding "We want to go to school and not the mines!" and held rallies each night in a new town on the way with music, skits, and speeches drawing thousands of citizens.

As Mother Jones noted, many of the children at union headquarters were missing fingers and had other disabilities, and she attempted to get newspaper publicity for the bad conditions experienced by children working in Pennsylvania. However, the mill owners held stock in most newspapers. When the newspapermen informed her that they could not publish the facts about child labor because of this, she remarked "Well, I've got stock in these little children and I'll arrange a little publicity." Permission to see President Roosevelt was denied by his secretary, and it was suggested that Jones address a letter to the president requesting a visit with him Mother Jones wrote a letter requesting a meeting, but never received an answer. Though the president refused to meet with the marchers, the incident brought the issue of child labor to the forefront of the public agenda. The 2003 non-fiction book Kids on Strike! described Jones's Children's Crusade in detail.

Activism and criminal charges
During the Paint Creek–Cabin Creek strike of 1912 in West Virginia, Mary Jones arrived in June 1912, speaking and organizing despite a shooting war between United Mine Workers members and the private army of the mine owners. Martial law in the area was declared and rescinded twice before Jones was arrested on February 13, 1913, and brought before a military court. Accused of conspiring to commit murder among other charges, she refused to recognize the legitimacy of her court-martial. She was sentenced to twenty years in the state penitentiary. During house arrest at Mrs. Carney's Boarding House, she acquired a dangerous case of pneumonia.

Jones was released after 85 days of confinement, and her release coincided with Indiana Senator John W. Kern's initiation of a Senate investigation into the conditions in the local coal mines. Mary Lee Settle describes Jones at this time in her 1978 novel The Scapegoat. Several months later, she helped organize coal miners in Colorado in the 1913–14 United Mine Workers of America strike against the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron company, in what is known as the Colorado Coalfield War. Once again she was arrested, serving time in prison and inside the San Rafael Hospital, and was escorted from the state in the months prior to the Ludlow Massacre. After the massacre, she was invited to meet with the owner of the Ludlow mine, John D. Rockefeller Jr. The meeting was partially responsible for Rockefeller's 1915 visit to the Colorado mines and introduction of long-sought reforms.

In 1917, Mother Jones played a role in the Bloomington Streetcar Strike. Mother Jones attempted to stop miners from marching into Logan County, West Virginia, in late August 1921. Mother Jones also visited the governor and departed assured he would intervene. Jones opposed the armed march, appeared on the line of march and told them to go home. In her hand, she claimed to have a telegram from President Warren Harding offering to work to end the private police in West Virginia if they returned home. When UMW president Frank Keeney demanded to see the telegram, Mother Jones refused and he denounced her as a 'fake'. Because she refused to show anyone the telegram, and the President's secretary denied ever having sent one, she was suspected of having fabricated the story. After she fled the camp, she reportedly suffered a nervous breakdown.

Mother Jones was joined by Keeney and other UMWA officials who were also pressuring the miners to go home.

Later years
Jones remained a union organizer for the UMW into the 1920s and continued to speak on union affairs almost until she died. She released her own account of her experiences in the labor movement as The Autobiography of Mother Jones (1925). Although Mother Jones organized for decades on behalf of the UMWA in West Virginia and even denounced the state as 'medieval', the chapter of the same name in her autobiography, she mostly praises Governor Ephraim F. Morgan for defending the First Amendment freedom of the weekly labor publication The Federationist to publish. His refusal to consent to the mine owners' request that he ban the paper demonstrated to Mother Jones that he 'refused to comply with the requests of the dominant money interests. To a man of that type, I wish to pay my respects'.

During her later years, Jones lived with her friends Walter and Lillie May Burgess on their farm in what is now Adelphi, Maryland. She celebrated her self-proclaimed 100th birthday there on May 1, 1930, and was filmed making a statement for a newsreel.

Death
Mary Harris Jones died on November 30, 1930, at the Burgess farm, then in Silver Spring, Maryland, now part of Adelphi. There was a funeral Mass at St. Gabriel's Catholic Church in Washington, D.C. Jones is buried in the Union Miners Cemetery in Mount Olive, Illinois, alongside miners who died in the 1898 Battle of Virden. She called these miners, killed in strike-related violence, "her boys." In 1932, about 15,000 Illinois mine workers gathered in Mount Olive to protest against the United Mine Workers, which soon became the Progressive Mine Workers of America. Convinced that they had acted in the spirit of Mother Jones, the miners decided to place a proper headstone on her grave. By 1936, the miners had saved up more than $16,000 and were able to purchase "eighty tons of Minnesota pink granite, with bronze statues of two miners flanking a twenty-foot shaft featuring a bas-relief of Mother Jones at its center." On October 11, 1936, also known as Miners' Day, an estimated 50,000 people arrived at Mother Jones's grave to see the new gravestone and memorial. Since then, October 11 is not only known as Miners' Day but is also referred to and celebrated in Mount Olive as "Mother Jones's Day."

The farm where she died began to advertise itself as the "Mother Jones Rest Home" in 1932, before being sold to a Baptist church in 1956. The site is now marked with a Maryland Historical Trust marker, and a nearby elementary school is named in her honor.

Legacy
In 1930, Mother Jones said the following regarding her legacy: "I am considered a Bolshevik, and a Red and an I.W.W., and a radical, and I admit to being all they've charged me with. I'm anything that would change monied civilization to a higher and grander civilization for the ages to come. And I long to see the day when labor will have the destination of the nation in her own hands, and she will stand a united force, and show the world what workers can do."

Mother Jones remained a well-known symbol for the American labor movement after her death and remains an important symbol for the power of organized labor among activists and organizers, both in the United States and globally.

 * Jones' words are still invoked by union supporters more than a century later: "Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living." Already known as "the miners' angel" when she was denounced on the floor of the United States Senate as the "grandmother of all agitators", she replied, "I hope to live long enough to be the great-grandmother of all agitators."
 * Mother Jones magazine was established in the 1970s and quickly became "the largest selling radical magazine of the decade."
 * In 1984, she was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
 * During the bitter 1989–90 Pittston Coal strike in Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky, the wives and daughters of striking coal miners, inspired by the still-surviving tales of Jones's legendary work among an earlier generation of the region's coal miners, dubbed themselves the "Daughters of Mother Jones". They played a crucial role on the picket lines and in presenting the miners' case to the press and public.
 * The Mother Jones Award was granted from 1996 to 2009, though skipping some years, by the Working Women’s History Project and its predecessor, the Women and Labor History Project.
 * To coincide with International Women's Day on March 8, 2010 a proposal from Councillor Ted Tynan for a plaque to be erected in Mary Harris Jones's native Cork City was passed by the Cork City Council. Members of the Cork Mother Jones Commemorative Committee unveiled the plaque on August 1, 2012 to mark the 175th anniversary of her birth. The Cork Mother Jones Festival was also held in 2012 in the Shandon area of the city, close to her birthplace, with numerous guest speakers. The festival now takes place annually around the anniversary and has led to growing awareness of Mother Jones's legacy and links between admirers in Ireland and the US. A new documentary, Mother Jones and Her Children, has been produced by Cork-based Frameworks Films and premiered at the Cork festival in 2014.
 * In 2019, Mother Jones was inducted into the National Mining Hall of Fame.
 * Mary Harris "Mother" Jones Elementary School exists in Adelphi, Maryland.
 * Students at Wheeling Jesuit University, Wheeling, West Virginia, can apply to reside in Mother Jones House, an off-campus service house. Residents perform at least ten hours of community service each week and participate in community dinners and events.
 * The imprisonment of "Mother" Jones is commemorated by the State of West Virginia through a Historic Highway marker. The marker was made by the West Virginia Division of Culture and History. The marker reads, "PRATT. First settled in the early 1780s and incorporated in 1905. Important site in 1912–13 Paint–Cabin Creek Strike. Labor organizer 'Mother Jones' spent her 84th birthday imprisoned here. Pratt Historic District, listed on the National Register in 1984, recognizes the town's important residential architecture from early plantation to Victorian Styles." The marker is located in the town of Pratt, right off of West Virginia 61.

Music and the other arts

 * On February 25, 1925, Gene Autry recorded the W.C. Callaway composition "The Death Of Mother Jones".
 * There is a myth that in The American Songbag (1927), Carl Sandburg suggests that the "she" in "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain" references Mother Jones and her travels to Appalachian mountain coal-mining camps promoting the unionization of the miners. However, there is no reference to Mother Jones in The American Songbag.
 * In the book Uncle (1964) by J.P. Martin, a train line is called Mother Jones's Siding and is rumored to be run by Mother Jones.
 * Through the fall of 1979 to summer 1980, the Overland Stage Company toured The Trial of Mother Jones throughout Wyoming and Colorado. The script by Roger Holzberg (with additional dialogue by Deb Scott) played in schools, community settings, and for union conferences. The middle school show was The Walsh Commission by John Murphy.
 * The play The Kentucky Cycle: Fire in the Hole (1991) portrays Jones as an inspirational figure one of the other characters knew and was inspired by to go and create unions in other coal towns.
 * "The most dangerous woman," a spoken-word performance by indie folk singer/spoken word performer Utah Phillips with music and backing vocals added to it by indie folk artist Ani Difranco, can be found on their collaborative album Fellow Workers (1999). The title refers to the moniker that a West Virginia District Attorney Reese Blizzard gave to Mother Jones, referring to her as "the most dangerous woman in America." Phillips performed the song "The Charge on Mother Jones." This folk song was written by William M. Rogers.
 * The title track of folk-roots duo Wishing Chair and Kara Barnard’s 2002 album Dishpan Brigade is about Jones and her role in the 1899–1900 miners' strike in Arnot, Pennsylvania.
 * Jones is the "woman" in Tom Russell's song "The Most Dangerous Woman in America," a commentary on the troubles of striking miners that appeared on his 2009 album Blood and Candle Smoke on the Shout! Factory label.
 * "The Spirit of Mother Jones" is a track on the 2010 Abocurragh album by Irish singer-songwriter Andy Irvine.
 * The play Can't Scare Me...the Story of Mother Jones was written and performed by actress, playwright, and professor Kaiulani Lee. It premiered at the Atlas Theater in Washington, D.C. in 2011, and Lee took the show on tour with the United Mine Workers across Colorado as well as tours in Ireland, Bangladesh, and Cambodia.
 * Mother Jones in Heaven is a one-woman musical written by the singer-songwriter and activist Si Kahn. It had its world premiere in Juneau, Alaska, in March 2014.
 * Mother Jones and the Children's Crusade, a musical based on her work in Pennsylvania, debuted in July 2014 as part of the New York Musical Theatre Festival in NYC. The play starred Robin de Jesus and Lynne Wintersteller.
 * "Never Call Me a Lady" (published 2015) (Brooklyn Publishers) is a 10-minute monologue by playwright Rusty Harding, in which Mother Jones recounts her life to a fellow traveler in a Chicago train station.
 * Victory at Arnot is a work for chamber group and narrator by composer Eleanor Aversa. It recounts how Mother Jones assisted with the coal miners' strike in 1899–1900 in Arnot, Pennsylvania, and celebrates the power of non-violent resistance. The piece premiered in Philadelphia in 2016 and was followed by performances in Boston.
 * The Trial of Mother Jones, a play by Roger Holzberg, premiered in Oxnard, California, in 2024.

title: Mother Jones


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Tintern Abbey

Tintern Abbey (Abaty Tyndyrn ) was founded on 9 May 1131 by Walter de Clare, Lord of Chepstow. It is situated adjacent to the village of Tintern in Monmouthshire, on the Welsh bank of the River Wye, which at this location forms the border between Monmouthshire in Wales and Gloucestershire in England. It was the first Cistercian foundation in Wales, and only the second in Britain (after Waverley Abbey).

The abbey fell into ruin after the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 16th century. Its remains have been celebrated in poetry and painting from the 18th century onwards. In 1984, Cadw took over responsibility for managing the site. Tintern Abbey is visited by approximately 70,000 people every year.

Earliest history
The Monmouthshire writer Fred Hando records the tradition of Tewdrig, King of Glywysing who retired to a hermitage above the river at Tintern. He then emerged to lead his son's army to victory against the Saxons at Pont-y-Saeson, a battle in which he was killed.

Cistercian foundations
The Cistercian Order was founded in 1098 at the abbey of Cîteaux. A breakaway faction of the Benedictines, the Cistercians sought to re-establish observance of the Rule of Saint Benedict. Considered the strictest of the monastic orders, they laid down requirements for the construction of their abbeys, stipulating that "none of our houses is to be built in cities, in castles or villages; but in places remote from the conversation of men. Let there be no towers of stone for bells, nor of wood of an immoderate height, which are unsuited to the simplicity of the order". The Cistercians also developed an approach to the Benedictine requirement for a dual commitment to pray and work that saw the evolving of a dual community, the monks and the lay brothers, illiterate workers who contributed to the life of the abbey and to the worship of God through manual labour. The order proved exceptionally successful and by 1151, five hundred Cistercian houses had been founded in Europe. The Carta Caritatis (Charter of Love) laid out their basic principles, of obedience, poverty, chastity, silence, prayer, and work. With this austere way of life, the Cistercians were one of the most successful orders in the 12th and 13th centuries. The lands of the Abbey were divided into agricultural units or granges, on which local people worked and provided services such as smithies to the Abbey.

William Giffard, Bishop of Winchester introduced the first colony of Cistercian monks to England at Waverley, Surrey, in 1128. His first cousin, Walter de Clare, of the powerful family of Clare, established the second Cistercian house in Britain, and the first in Wales, at Tintern in 1131. The Tintern monks came from a daughter house of Cîteaux, L'Aumône Abbey, in the diocese of Chartres in France. In time, Tintern established two daughter houses, Kingswood in Gloucestershire (1139) and Tintern Parva, west of Wexford in southeast Ireland (1203).

First and second abbeys: 1131–1536
The present-day remains of Tintern are a mixture of building works covering a 400-year period between 1131 and 1536. Very little of the first buildings still survives today; a few sections of walling are incorporated into later buildings and the two recessed cupboards for books on the east of the cloisters are from this period. The church of that time was smaller than the present building, and slightly to the north. The Abbey was mostly rebuilt during the 13th century, starting with the cloisters and domestic ranges, and finally the great church between 1269 and 1301. The first mass in the rebuilt presbytery was recorded to have taken place in 1288, and the building was consecrated in 1301, although building work continued for several decades. Roger Bigod, 5th Earl of Norfolk, the then lord of Chepstow, was a generous benefactor; his monumental undertaking was the rebuilding of the church. The earl's coat of arms was included in the glasswork of the Abbey's east window in recognition of his contribution.

It is this great Decorated Gothic abbey church that can be seen today, representing the architectural developments of its period; it has a cruciform plan with an aisled nave, two chapels in each transept, and a square-ended aisled chancel. The abbey is built of Old Red Sandstone, with colours varying from purple to buff and grey. Its total length from east to west is 228 feet, while the transept is 150 feet in length.

King Edward II stayed at Tintern for two nights in 1326. When the Black Death swept the country in 1349, it became impossible to attract new recruits for the lay brotherhood; during this period, the granges were more likely to be tenanted out than worked by lay brothers, evidence of Tintern's labour shortage. In the early 15th century, Tintern was short of money, due in part to the effects of the Welsh uprising under Owain Glyndŵr against the English kings, when abbey properties were destroyed by the Welsh. The closest battle to Tintern Abbey was at Craig-y-dorth near Monmouth, between Trellech and Mitchel Troy.

Dissolution and ruin
In the reign of Henry VIII, the Dissolution of the Monasteries ended monastic life in England, Wales and Ireland. On 3 September 1536, Abbot Wych surrendered Tintern Abbey and all its estates to the King's visitors and ended a way of life that had lasted 400 years. Valuables from the Abbey were sent to the royal Treasury and Abbot Wych was pensioned off. The building was granted to the then lord of Chepstow, Henry Somerset, 2nd Earl of Worcester. Lead from the roof was sold and the decay of the buildings began.

Church
The west front of the church, with its seven-light decorated window, was completed around 1300.

Nave
The nave is of six bays, and originally had arcades to both the northern and southern sides.

Monks' choir and presbytery
The presbytery is of four bays, with a great east window, originally of eight lights. Almost all of the tracery is gone, with the exception of the central column and the mullion above.

Cloister
The cloister retains its original width, but its length was extended in the 13th century rebuilding, creating a near square.

Book room and sacristy
The book room parallels the sacristy and both were created at the very end of the construction period of the second abbey, around 1300.

Chapter house
The chapter house was the place for daily gatherings of the monks, to discuss non-religious abbey business, make confession and listen to a reading from the Book of Rules.

Monks' dormitory and latrine
The monks' dormitory occupied almost the entirety of the upper storey of the east range. The latrines were double-storeyed, with access both from the dormitory and from the day-room below.

Refectory
The refectory dates from the early 13th century, and is a replacement for an earlier hall.

Kitchen
Little of the kitchen, which served both the monks' refectory, and the lay brothers' dining hall, remains.

Lay brothers' dormitory
The dormitory was sited above the lay brothers' refectory but has been completely destroyed.

Infirmary
The infirmary, 107 ft long and 54 ft wide, housed both sick and elderly monks in cubicles in the aisles. The cubicles were originally open to the hall but were enclosed in the 15th century when each recess was provided with a fireplace.

Abbot's residence
The abbot's lodgings date from two periods, its origins in the early 13th century, and with a major expansion in the late 14th century.

Industry
Following the Abbey's dissolution, the adjacent area became industrialised with the setting-up of the first wireworks by the Company of Mineral and Battery Works in 1568 and the later expansion of factories and furnaces up the Angidy valley. Charcoal was made in the woods to feed these operations and, in addition, the hillside above was quarried for the making of lime at a kiln in constant operation for some two centuries. The Abbey site was in consequence subject to a degree of pollution and the ruins themselves were inhabited by the local workers. J.T.Barber, for example, remarked on "passing the works of an iron foundry and a train of miserable cottages engrafted on the offices of the Abbey" on his approach.

Not all visitors to the Abbey ruins were shocked by the intrusion of industry, however. Joseph Cottle and Robert Southey set out to view the ironworks at midnight on their 1795 tour, while others painted or sketched them during the following years. A 1799 print of the Abbey by Edward Dayes includes the boat landing near the ruins with the square-sailed local cargo vessel known as a trow drawn up there. On the bank is some of the encroaching housing, while in the background above are the cliffs of a lime quarry and smoke rising from the kiln. Though Philip James de Loutherbourg's 1805 painting of the ruins does not include the intrusive buildings commented on by others, it makes their inhabitants and animals a prominent feature. Even William Havell's panorama of the valley from the south pictures smoke rising in the distance (see Gallery), much as Wordsworth had noted five years before "wreathes of smoke sent up in silence from among the trees" in his description of the scene.

18th and 19th centuries

By the mid-18th century it became fashionable to visit "wilder" parts of the country. The Wye Valley in particular was well known for its romantic and picturesque qualities and the ivy-clad Abbey was frequented by tourists. One of the earliest prints of the Abbey had been in the series of engravings of historical sites made in 1732 by Samuel and Nathaniel Buck. Their sets of views, however, catered to antiquarian interests and often were a means to flatter the landowners involved and so gain orders for their publications. Tourism as such developed in the following decades. The "Wye Tour" is claimed to have had its beginning after Dr John Egerton began taking friends on trips down the valley in a specially constructed boat from his rectory at Ross-on-Wye and continued doing so for a number of years. Rev. Dr. Sneyd Davies' short verse epistle, "Describing a Voyage to Tintern Abbey, in Monmouthshire, from Whitminster in Gloucestershire", was published in 1745, the year Egerton took possession of his benefice. But that journey was made in the opposite direction, sailing from the Gloucestershire shore across the River Severn to Chepstow and then ascending the Wye.

Among subsequent visitors was Francis Grose, who included the Abbey in his Antiquities of England and Wales, begun in 1772 and supplemented with more illustrations from 1783. In his description he noted how the ruins were being tidied for the benefit of tourists: "The fragments of its once sculptured roof, and other remains of its fallen decorations, are piled up with more regularity than taste on each side of the grand aisle." There they remained for the next century and more, as is evident from the watercolours of J. M. W. Turner (1794), the prints of Francis Calvert (1815) and the photographs of Roger Fenton (1858). Grose further complained that the site was too well tended and lacked "that gloomy solemnity so essential to religious ruins".

Another visitor during the 1770s was the Rev. William Gilpin, who later published a record of his tour in Observations on the River Wye (1782), devoting several pages to the Abbey as well as including his own sketches of both a near and a far view of the ruins. Though he too noted the same points as had Grose, and despite also the presence of the impoverished residents and their desolate dwellings, he found the Abbey nevertheless "a very inchanting piece of ruin". Gilpin's book helped increase the popularity of the already established Wye tour and gave travellers the aesthetic tools by which to interpret their experience. It also encouraged "its associated activities of amateur sketching and painting" and the writing of other travel journals of such tours. Initially Gilpin's book was associated with his theory of the Picturesque, but later some of this was modified by another editor so that, as Thomas Dudley Fosbroke’s Gilpin on the Wye (1818), the account of the tour could function as the standard guidebook for much of the new century.

Meanwhile, other more focussed works aimed at the tourist were available by now. They included Charles Heath’s Descriptive Accounts of Tintern Abbey, first published in 1793, which was sold at the Abbey itself and in nearby towns. This grew into an evolving project that ran through eleven editions until 1828 and, as well as keeping abreast of the latest travel information, was also a collection of historical and literary materials descriptive of the building. Later there appeared Taylor's Illustrated Guide to the Banks of the Wye, published from Chepstow in 1854 and often reprinted. The work of local bookseller Robert Taylor, it was aimed at arriving tourists and also available eventually at the Abbey. Much the same information as in that work appeared later as the 8-page digest, An Hour at Tintern Abbey (1870, 1891), by John Taylor.

Until the early 19th century, the local roads were rough and dangerous and the easiest access to the site was by boat. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, while trying to reach Tintern from Chepstow on a tour with friends in 1795, almost rode his horse over the edge of a quarry when they became lost in the dark. It was not until 1829 that the new Wye Valley turnpike was completed, cutting through the abbey precinct. In 1876 the Wye Valley Railway opened a station for Tintern. Although the line itself crossed the river before reaching the village, a branch was built from it to the wireworks, obstructing the view of the Abbey on the road approach from the north.

20th and 21st centuries
In 1901, Tintern Abbey was bought by the Crown from the Duke of Beaufort for £15,000 and the site was acknowledged as a monument of national importance. Although there had been some repair work done in the ruins as a result of the 18th-century growth of tourism, it was not until now that archaeological investigation began and informed maintenance work was carried out on the Abbey. In 1914, responsibility for the ruins was passed to the Office of Works, who undertook major structural repairs and partial reconstructions (including removal of the ivy considered so romantic by the early tourists). In 1984, Cadw took over responsibility for the site, which was Grade I listed from 29 September 2000. The arch of the Abbey's watergate, which led from the Abbey to the River Wye, was Grade II listed from the same date.

In the visual arts
Evidence of the growth of interest in the Abbey and the visitors attracted to it is provided by the number of painters who arrived to record aspects of the site. The painters Francis Towne (1777), Thomas Gainsborough (1782), Thomas Girtin (1793), and J. M. W. Turner in the 1794–95 series now at the Tate and the British Museum, depicted details of the Abbey's stonework. So did Samuel Palmer (see Gallery) and Thomas Creswick in the 19th century, as well as amateurs such as the father and daughter named Ellis who made a watercolour study of the refectory windows in the second half of the century (see Gallery). About that period too, the former painter turned photographer, Roger Fenton, applied this new art not only to detailing a later stage in the decay of the building, but used the quality of light to emphasise it. Visiting artists also focused on the effects of light and atmospheric conditions. Charles Heath, in his 1806 guide to the abbey, had commented on the "inimitable" effect of the harvest moon shining through the main window. Other moonlit depictions of the abbey include John Warwick Smith’s earlier 1779 scene of the ruins from across the river and Peter van Lerberghe’s interior of 1812, with its tourist guides carrying burning torches, which shows the abbey interior lit both by these and by moonlight. Once the railway had arrived in the vicinity, steam excursions were organised in the 1880s to Tintern station so as to view the harvest moon through the rose window.

Earlier in the century, the light effects made possible by transparencies (a forerunner of the modern photographic negative) had been deployed to underline such aspects of the picturesque. Among those described in the novel Mansfield Park (1814) as decorating its heroine’s sitting room, one was of Tintern Abbey. The function of the transparencies was to reproduce light effects, such as “fire light, moon light, and other glowing illusions”, created by painting areas of colour on the back of a commercial engraving and adding varnish to make specific areas translucent when suspended in front of a light source. Since the Abbey was one of the buildings recommended for viewing by moonlight, it is possible that this was the subject of the one in Fanny's room. In fact, a tinted print of the period such as those used for creating transparencies already existed in "Ibbetson's Picturesque Guide to Bath, Bristol &c", in which the full moon is featured as seen through an arch of the east wing.

Different light effects appear in the work of other painters, such as the sunsets by Samuel Palmer and Benjamin Williams Leader, and the colour study by Turner in which the distant building appears as a "dark shape at the centre" beneath slanting sunlight (see Gallery).

Hybrid works
Prints of historical buildings along the Wye increased during the fourth quarter of the 18th century, with interior views and details of the Abbey's stonework among them. Two later sets of these were distinguished by including a selection of unattributed verses. First came four tinted prints that mixed both distant and interior views of the building, published by Frederick Calvert in 1815. The other was an anonymous set of views, with the same verses printed below. These were published by the London firm of Rock & Co. and later pasted on pages of an album in the King's Library.

One set of verses hails the Abbey's survival, despite Henry VIII's dissolution, "Where thou in gothic grandeur reign’st alone". The phrase "gothic grandeur" derives from John Cunningham’s "An elegy on a pile of ruins”" (1761), an excerpt from which was published by Grose at the end of his description of Tintern Abbey. At that period the adjective was used as a synonym for "mediaeval" and was so applied by Grose when describing the Abbey as being "of that stile of architecture called gothic". Cunningham's poem was a melancholy contemplation of the ravages of time that spoke in general terms without naming a specific building. But the verses on the print are more positive in feeling; in celebrating the Abbey's historical persistence, they do not see ruin as necessarily a cause for regret. The scenes below which the verses appear are also quite different from each other. Calvert's view is across the river from the opposite bank of the Wye, while the Rock print is close up to the ruins with the river in the background.

Tintern is not specifically named in the verses mentioned above, although it is in two other sets and their poetic form overall is consistent: paired quatrains with pentameter lines rhymed alternately. One set begins "Yes, sacred Tintern, since thy earliest age," and King Henry is again represented as being foiled in his intention, but this time by no "earthly king". The Abbey's roof is now "of Heaven’s all glorious blue" and its pillars "foliaged… in vivid hue". Here Calvert's interior view looks past the ivy-grown pillars to the south window. The Rock view that these lines accompany is of that same window, surrounded by ivy and viewed from the exterior. Another set of verses begins "Thee! venerable Tintern, thee I hail", and celebrates the Abbey's setting. An appeal to Classical standards of beauty is made by calling the Wye by its Latin name of Vaga and referring to the serenading nightingale as Philomel. Naturally the river features in both prints, but where Calvert's is the south-east view from the high ground behind the Abbey, with the Wye flowing past it to the right, the Rock view is from across the river, looking up to the high ground.

The remaining print by Calvert is another view of the interior in which a small figure in the foreground points down to a heap of masonry there, while the Rock print corresponds to Calvert's view of the south window. The accompanying stanzas deal with the transient nature of fame. Beginning “Proud man! Stop here, survey yon fallen stone”, their emotional tone is a melancholy at odds with the buoyant message of the other verses. It is uncertain whether all eight stanzas were originally from the same poem on the subject of the Abbey and what the relationship was between poet and artist.

J. M. W. Turner had been accompanying his work with poetical extracts from 1798, but it was not a widespread practice. However, the appearance of the title A Series of Sonnets Written Expressly to Accompany Some Recently-Published Views of Tintern Abbey, dating from 1816, the year after the appearance of Calvert's portfolio, suggests another contemporary marriage between literary and artistic responses to the ruins. But while the main focus in Calvert's Four Coloured Engravings is the pictures, in a later hybrid work combining verse and illustration it is the text. Louisa Anne Meredith’s "Tintern Abbey in four sonnets" appeared in the 1835 volume of her Poems, prefaced by the reproduction of the author's own sketch of the ivy-covered north transept. This supplements in particular the description in the third sonnet:
 * Th’ivy’s foliage twined
 * The air-hung arch – the column‘s lofty height,
 * Wreathing fantastically round the light
 * And traceried shaft.

Poetry
A dedicatory letter at the start of Gilpin's Observations on the river Wye is addressed to the poet William Mason and mentions a similar tour made in 1771 by the poet Thomas Gray. Neither of those dedicated a poem to the Abbey, but the place was soon to appear in topographical works in verse. Among the earliest was the 1784 six-canto Chepstow; or, A new guide to gentlemen and ladies whose curiosity leads them to visit Chepstow: Piercefield-walks, Tintern-abbey, and the beautiful romantic banks of the Wye, from Tintern to Chepstow by water by the Rev. Edward Davies (1719–89). Furnished with many historical and topical discursions, the poem included a description of the method of iron-making in the passage devoted to Tintern, which was later to be included in two guide books, the most popular of which was successive editions of Charles Heath's. Then in 1825 it was followed by yet another long poem, annotated and in four books, by Edward Collins: Tintern Abbey or the Beauties of Piercefield (Chepstow, 1825).

The Abbey also featured in poems arising from the Wye tour, such as the already mentioned account of his voyage by Rev. Sneyd Davies, in which the ruins are briefly reflected on at its end. It is that element of personal response that largely distinguishes such poems from verse documentaries of the sort written by Edward Davies and Edward Collins. For example, the gap between the ideal and the actual is what Thomas Warwick noted, looking upstream to the ruins of Tintern Abbey and downstream to those of Chepstow Castle, in a sonnet written at nearby Piercefield House. Edward Jerningham's short lyric, "Tintern Abbey", written in 1796, commented on the lamentable lesson of the past, appealing to Gilpin's observations as his point of reference. Fosbroke's later adaptation of that work is likewise recommended as a supplement to Arthur St John's more voluminous description in the account of his own tour along the river in 1819, The Weft of the Wye.

Contemplation of the past reminded the Rev. Luke Booker of his personal mortality in an "Original sonnet composed on leaving Tintern Abbey and proceeding with a party of friends down the River Wye to Chepstow"; inspired by his journey, he hopes to sail as peacefully at death to the "eternal Ocean". And Edmund Gardner (1752?–1798), with his own death imminent, similarly concluded in his "Sonnet Written in Tintern Abbey", that "Man’s but a temple of a shorter date". William Wordsworth’s different reflections followed a tour on foot that he made along the river in 1798, although he does not actually mention the ruins in his "Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey". Instead, he recalls an earlier visit five years before and comments on the beneficial internalisation of that memory. Later Robert Bloomfield made his own tour of the area with friends, recording the experience in a journal and in his long poem, "The Banks of the Wye" (1811). However, since the timetable of the boat-trip downstream was constrained by the necessity of the tide, the Abbey was only given brief attention as one of many items on the way.

Aspects of the building's past were treated at much greater length in two more poems. George Richards' ode, "Tintern Abbey; or the Wandering Minstrel", was probably written near the end of the 18th century. It opens with a description of the site as it used to be, seen from outside; then a minstrel arrives, celebrating the holy building in his song as a place of loving nurture, of grace and healing. The other work, "The Legend of Tintern Abbey", is claimed as having been "written on the Banks of the Wye" by Edwin Paxton Hood, who quotes it in his historical work, Old England. An 11-stanza poem in rolling anapaestic metre, it relates how Walter de Clare had murdered his wife and built the Abbey in penitence. Closing on an evocation of the ruins by moonlight, the work was later reprinted in successive editions of "Taylor's Illustrated Guide" over the following decades.

Louisa Anne Meredith used the occasion of her visit to reimagine the past in a series of linked sonnets that allowed her to pass backwards from the present-day remains, beautified by the mantling vegetation, to bygone scenes, "Calling them back to life from darkness and decay". For Henrietta F. Vallé, "Seeing a lily of the valley blooming among the ruins of Tintern" was sufficient to mediate the pious sentiments of a former devotee there. As she noted, "it must ever awaken mental reflection to see beauty blossoming among decay".

But the religious strife of the following decades forbade such a sympathetic response and made a new battleground of the ruins. "Tintern Abbey: a Poem" (1854) was, according to its author, Frederick Bolingbroke Ribbans (1800–1883), "occasioned by a smart retort given to certain Romish priests who expressed the hope of soon recovering their ecclesiastical tenure of it". He prefers to see the building in its present decay than return to the time of its flourishing, "when thou wast with falsehood fill’d". Martin Tupper too, in his sonnet "Tintern Abbey" (1858), exhorts his readers to "Look on these ruins in a spirit of praise", insofar as they represent "Emancipation for the Soul" from superstition.

Only a few years earlier, in his 1840 sonnet on the Abbey, Richard Monckton Milnes had deplored the religious philistinism which had "wreckt this noble argosy of faith". He concluded, as had Louisa Anne Meredith's sonnets and the verses accompanying Calvert's prints, that the ruin's natural beautification signified divine intervention, "Masking with good that ill which cannot be undone". In the wake of the Protestant backlash since then, Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley was constrained to allow, in the three sonnets he devoted to the Abbey, that after "Men cramped the truth" the building's subsequent ruin had followed as a judgment. However, its renewed, melodic blossoming now stands as a reproach to Tupper's brand of pietism too: "Man, fretful with the Bible on his knee,/ Has need of such sweet musicker as thee!"

In the 20th century two American poets returned to Wordsworth's evocation of the landscape as the launching pad for their personal visions. John Gould Fletcher’s "Elegy on Tintern Abbey" answered the Romantic poet's optimism with a denunciation of subsequent industrialisation and its ultimate outcome in the social and material destructiveness of World War I. Following a visit some thirty years later, Allen Ginsberg took lysergic acid near there on 29 July 1967 and afterwards wrote his poem "Wales Visitation" as a result. By way of "the silent thought of Wordsworth in eld Stillness" he beholds "clouds passing through skeleton arches of Tintern Abbey" and from that focus goes on to experience oneness with valleyed Wales.

Fiction
In 1816, the abbey was made the backdrop to Sophia Ziegenhirt's three-volume novel of Gothic horror, The Orphan of Tintern Abbey, which begins with a description of the Abbey as seen on a sailing tour down the Wye from Ross to Chepstow. Her work was dismissed by The Monthly Review as "of the most ordinary class, in which the construction of the sentences and that of the story are equally confused".

During the 20th century the genre switched to supernatural fiction, starting with "The Ghost of Tintern Abbey" (1901) by Mrs (Harriet Margaret Anne) Arthur Traherne, which is the means of discovering a murder. It was followed by "The Troubled Spirit of Tintern Abbey", a story privately printed in 1910 under the initials 'E. B.' which was later included in Lord Halifax’s Ghost Book (1936). There an Anglican cleric and his wife are on a cycling tour in the Wye valley and are contacted by a ghost from Purgatory who persuades them to have masses said for his soul. Later came Henry Gardner's novella, "The Ghost of Tintern Abbey", in 1984.

The more recent novel, Gordon Master's The Secrets of Tintern Abbey (2008), covers the building's mediaeval history as the author dramatises the turbulent 400 years of the Cistercian community up to the monastery's dissolution.

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title: Tintern Abbey


text:
Chepstow

Chepstow (Cas-gwent) is a town and community in Monmouthshire, Wales, adjoining the border with Gloucestershire, England. It is located on the tidal River Wye, about 2 mi above its confluence with the River Severn, and adjoining the western end of the Severn Bridge. It is the easternmost settlement in Wales, situated 16 mi east of Newport, 28 mi east-northeast of Cardiff, 18 mi northwest of Bristol and 110 mi west of London.

Chepstow Castle, situated on a clifftop above the Wye and its bridge, is often cited as the oldest surviving stone castle in Britain. The castle was established by William FitzOsbern immediately after the Norman conquest, and was extended in later centuries before becoming ruined after the Civil War. A Benedictine priory was also established within the walled town, which was the centre of the Marcher lordship of Striguil. The port of Chepstow became noted in the Middle Ages for its imports of wine, and also became a major centre for the export of timber and bark, from nearby woodland in the Wye Valley and Forest of Dean. In the late eighteenth century the town was a focus of early tourism as part of the "Wye Tour", and the tourist industry remains important. Other important industries included shipbuilding – one of the First World War National Shipyards was established in the town – and heavy engineering, including the prefabrication of bridges and wind turbine towers. Chepstow is also well known for its racecourse, which has hosted the Welsh National each year since 1949.

The town had a population of 12,350 at the 2011 census, decreasing to 11,900 (rounded to the nearest 100) at the 2021 census. It is served by the M48 motorway, and its accessibility to the cities of Bristol, Newport and Cardiff means it has a large number of commuters. It is administered as part of Monmouthshire County Council, and is within the Monmouth UK parliamentary constituency and Senedd constituency. Chepstow is on the western bank of the Wye, while adjoining villages on the eastern bank of the river, Tutshill and Sedbury, are in England. The population of the built-up area including these villages was 15,600 in 2021.

Etymology
The name Chepstow derives from the Old English ceap/chepe stowe, meaning market place or trading centre. The word "stow" usually denotes a place of special significance, and the root chep is the same as that in other placenames such as Chipping Sodbury and Cheapside. The name is first recorded in 1307, but may have been used by the English in earlier centuries. However, the name used by the Normans for the castle and lordship was Striguil (in various spellings, such as Estrighoiel), probably derived from a Welsh word ystraigyl, meaning a bend in the river. The Welsh name Cas-gwent refers to the "castle of Gwent". The name Gwent itself derives from the Roman settlement Venta Silurum or 'Market of the Silures', now named Caerwent, 5 mi west of Chepstow, which had been the Romano-British commercial centre of south-east Wales.

Early settlement
The oldest site of known habitation at Chepstow is at Thornwell, overlooking the estuaries of the Wye and Severn close to the modern M48 motorway junction, where archaeological investigations in advance of recent housing development revealed continuous human occupation from the Mesolithic period of around 5000 BC until the end of the Roman period, about 400 AD. There are also Iron Age fortified camps in the area, dating from the time of the Silures, at Bulwark, 1 mi south of the town centre, and at Piercefield and Lancaut, some 1.5 mi to the north. During the Roman occupation, there was a bridge or causeway across the Wye, about 0.6 mi upstream of the later town bridge. Chepstow is located at a crossing point directly between the Roman towns at Gloucester (Glevum) and Caerwent (Venta Silurum). Although historians think it likely that there was a small Roman fort in the area, the only evidence found so far has been of Roman material and burials, rather than buildings.

After the Romans left, Chepstow was within the southern part of the Welsh kingdom of Gwent, known as Gwent Is-coed (i.e. Gwent this side of the woods). To the north of the modern town centre, a small church was established dedicated to St. Cynfarch (alternatively Cynmarch, Kynemark or Kingsmark), a disciple of St. Dyfrig. This later became an Augustinian priory on what is now Kingsmark Lane, but no traces of it remain. The town is close to the southern point of Offa's Dyke, which begins on the east bank of the Wye at Sedbury and runs all the way to the Irish Sea in north Wales. This was built in the late 8th century as a boundary between Mercia and the Welsh kingdoms, although some recent research has questioned whether the stretch near Chepstow formed part of the original Dyke. It is possible, though not clearly substantiated, that Chepstow may have superseded Caerwent as a trading centre, and been used by both Saxons and the Welsh. The Lancaut and Beachley peninsulas, opposite Chepstow, were in Welsh rather than Mercian control at that time, although by the time of the Domesday Book Striguil was assessed as part of Gloucestershire.

The Normans
After the Norman conquest of England, Chepstow was a key location. It was at the lowest bridging point of the River Wye, provided a base from which to advance Norman control into south Wales, and controlled river access to Hereford and the Marches. Chepstow Castle was founded by William fitzOsbern, 1st Earl of Hereford, in 1067, and its Great Tower, often cited as the oldest surviving stone fortification in Britain, dates from that time or shortly afterwards. Its site, with sheer cliffs on one side and a natural valley on the other, afforded an excellent defensive location. A Benedictine priory, now St Mary's Church, was also established nearby. This was the centre of a small religious community, the remains of which are buried under the adjoining car park. Monks, originally from Cormeilles Abbey in Normandy, were there until the Dissolution of the Monasteries.

The castle was expanded by William Marshal in the late twelfth century and, a century later, by Roger Bigod, 5th Earl of Norfolk. Bigod was also responsible for establishing a weekly market and annual fair, in the town which had grown up on the slopes between the castle and priory, and for building the Port Wall around it shortly after 1274. A toll gate controlled entry to the market area; this Town Gate was rebuilt in the 16th century. The town faced some hostile attacks from the Welsh to the west, but after the 14th century the castle's importance diminished. The port of Chepstow developed during the mediaeval period, one reason being that its control by a Marcher Lord, rather than by the King, meant that it was exempt from English taxation. It mainly traded in timber and bark from the Wye Valley, and with Bristol. From mediaeval times, Chepstow was the largest port in Wales; its ships sailed as far as Iceland and Turkey, as well as to France and Portugal, and the town was known for its imports of wine.

Later history
Chepstow was given its first charter in 1524, by Charles Somerset, 1st Earl of Worcester, and became part of Monmouthshire when the county was formed. The town appears as "Strigulia", "Chepstowe" and "Castelh Gwent" on the Cambriae Typus map of 1573. The castle and town changed hands several times during the English Civil War, and the regicide Henry Marten was later imprisoned and died in the castle. The port continued to flourish; during the period 1790 to 1795, records show a greater tonnage of goods handled than Swansea, Cardiff and Newport combined. Chepstow reached the peak of its importance during the Napoleonic Wars, when its exports of timber, for ships, and bark, for leather tanning, were especially vital. There were also exports of wire and paper, made in the many mills on the tributaries of the Wye. An important aspect of Chepstow's trade was entrepôt trade: bringing larger cargoes into the manageable deep water of the Wye on high tide and breaking down the load for on-shipment in the many trows up the Wye to Hereford past the coin stamping mill at Redbrook, or up the Severn to Gloucester and beyond. Chepstow also traded across the estuary to Bristol on suitable tides to work vessels up and down the Avon to that city's centre. Many buildings in the town remain from the late 18th and early 19th centuries; the elegant cast iron bridge across the Wye was opened in 1816 to replace an earlier wooden structure.

The town became an important centre for tourism from the late eighteenth century, when the "Wye Tour" became popular. Visitors regularly took boats from Ross-on-Wye and Monmouth down the river, visiting, drawing and painting the "picturesque" views of the area, which included those of Tintern Abbey, Piercefield House, and the ruined Chepstow Castle. In the 19th century a shipbuilding industry developed, and the town was also known for the production of clocks, bells, and grindstones. In 1840 leaders of the Chartist insurrection in Newport were transported from Chepstow to Van Diemen's Land. The port's trade declined after the early 19th century, as Cardiff, Newport and Swansea became more suitable for handling the bulk export of coal and steel from the Glamorganshire and Monmouthshire valleys. However, shipbuilding was briefly revived when the National Shipyard No.1 was established during the First World War and for a short period afterwards, when the first prefabricated ships, including the War Glory, were constructed there. The influx of labour for the shipyards, from 1917, led to the start of "garden suburb" housing development at Hardwick (now known locally as "Garden City") and Bulwark. The shipyard itself became a works for fabricating major engineering structures. From 1938, Chepstow housed the head office of the Red & White bus company, on Bulwark Road.

New housing development in the twentieth century took place to the north and south of the town centre, and more recently beyond the A466 road to the west of the town. The town developed rapidly after the opening of the Severn Bridge in 1966, which replaced the car ferry between Beachley and Aust and allowed easier commuting between Chepstow and larger centres including Bristol and Cardiff. Over £2 million was invested in regenerating the town centre in 2004–05. This scheme, which includes sculptures and other public art, encountered some local criticism over its high cost, but gained several national awards reflecting its high design quality. The area beside the river has also been landscaped in association with a flood defence scheme.

Geography
Chepstow is located on the west bank of the River Wye, some 3 mi north of its confluence with the Severn estuary. To the north of the town, the Wye passes through a limestone gorge, and there are limestone cliffs at Chepstow both north and south of the town centre and on the opposite (east) side of the river. The town is overlooked by the inland cliffs at Wyndcliff near St Arvans, about 2 mi north of the town, and, from parts of the town, the Severn estuary and its bridges can be seen. The historic centre of Chepstow occupies part of a bend in the River Wye, and slopes up from the river to the town centre and beyond. As well as cliffs used for rock climbing, percolation of acidic groundwater has dissolved limestone to produce caves in the area, including Otter Hole, one of the most decorated cave systems in Britain. The climate of the town is affected by its position close to the Severn estuary.

The bedrock of Chepstow is limestone, mudstone and sandstone, overlain in places with some gravels and the clay and silt of the river's tidal flats, which are of marine origin and up to two million years old. Most of the rock was produced in a warm, tropical marine environment, when Europe was closer to the equator. The rock of Sedbury cliffs and those under Chepstow Castle are Carboniferous Limestone, hundreds of metres thick in the area, made of particles and shells of sea creatures from 330 to 360 million years ago. Layered outcrops of darker Black Rock Limestone, which makes up a broad part of Chepstow's bedrock, are very clear in cliffs along Craig yr Afon, part of the Wales Coast Path extending from Wyebank Road, and by the link road from Bulwark Road to the M48, where the looser reddish Mercia Mudstone (which extends under Bulwark and Sedbury and forms the cliffs at the Severn) and the lighter Hunts Bay limestone are also seen.

The River Wye at Chepstow has one of the highest tidal ranges in the world. The river was established as a boundary between England and Wales by Athelstan in 928. However, after the Norman conquest, areas east of the Wye, within the former Saxon royal manor of Tidenham and including Beachley, Tutshill, Sedbury and Tidenham Chase, were included within the lordship of Striguil or Chepstow. In 1536, the river was confirmed as the boundary between Monmouthshire and Gloucestershire. Since the early 19th century, housing development has continued on the east bank of the river opposite Chepstow, at Tutshill and Sedbury. Those areas, though located in England rather than Wales, are now effectively suburbs of the town.

Governance
Chepstow is administered by Monmouthshire County Council, one of the 22 unitary local authorities in Wales formed in 1996. As of 2022, the town elects six county councillors, for the wards of Bulwark and Thornwell (2 members); Chepstow Castle and Larkfield (2 members); Mount Pleasant; and St Kingsmark. Following the 2022 local elections, the councillors are four from the Labour party, and two Conservative. The town also has its own Town Council, comprising 15 councillors elected every four years. The council elects a Town Mayor from among its number each year. The Town Mayor for 2022/23 is Cllr Margaret Griffiths.

Chepstow was an electoral ward to Gwent County Council between 1973 and 1996. Its first councillor, Barney O'Neill, became leader of the council in 1974.

Chepstow was granted a town charter in 1524 by its Marcher Lord, Charles Somerset, 1st Earl of Worcester. After the county of Monmouth was formed, Chepstow was included within the Hundred of Caldicot in 1542. A Corporation of bailiffs and burgesses controlled the town until the time of Charles II, when its charter lapsed, apparently as a result of a dispute. The town came under the control of a Local Board from 1864, and an urban district council was formed in 1894. Chepstow Urban District Council was abolished in 1974, when many of its functions were taken over by the new Monmouth District Council. This was renamed Monmouth Borough Council in 1988, and formed one of the five districts of Gwent until both authorities were abolished in 1996.

The town's representation in Parliament was as part of the county of Monmouth seat, from 1536. Between 1885 and 1918 it formed part of the South Monmouthshire constituency, and since then has been within the Monmouth county constituency. The town has remained within the Monmouth constituency in subsequent elections, although the constituency boundary has changed several times. The constituency has returned a Conservative MP at most recent elections; the current member is David Davies, first elected in 2005. In elections for the Senedd, the town is part of the Monmouth constituency; the current MS is Peter Fox (Conservative). Until January 2020 Chepstow was within the Wales constituency for the European Parliament.

The Laws in Wales Acts created an anomaly in that, although Monmouthshire was noted as being in the 'Country or Dominion of Wales', it was made directly responsible to the courts of Westminster rather than falling under the Court of Great Sessions in Wales. Most legislation for Wales was applied to it using the phrase "Wales and Monmouthshire", and the issue of whether Monmouthshire should be considered as part of Wales for administrative purposes was finally clarified in law by the Local Government Act 1972 which incorporated it within Wales.

Economy
Chepstow developed from mediaeval times as a port and trading centre. Its port functions, together with its shipbuilding industry, have now virtually ceased. The industries which developed on the shipyard sites, particularly the fabrication of major engineering structures by the Mabey Group, continued close to the town centre as well as on the Newhouse Farm industrial estate beside the M48 motorway, where wind turbine towers were assembled. In July 2015, the company announced that the site was to close with the loss of 125 jobs, following the decision by the UK government to end subsidies for onshore wind generation.

Other local industries have included the material for artificial ski slopes, developed at the "Dendix" brush factory, which in its time was a producer of all sizes of industrial brushes. The works, now operated by Osborn-Unipol, relocated out of the town centre to a new site beside the motorway in 2011. There are smaller industrial estates in Bulwark, and close to the town's railway station, and the Newhouse Farm industrial estate is also a major distribution centre. Other notable locally based businesses have included Architen Landrell, a manufacturer of tensile architectural structures, whose closure was announced in December 2015; and MVM Films, a distributor of Japanese animated films.

Chepstow is primarily a centre for service industries and tourism in South West England and Wales. Due to its very good rail and road links, Chepstow has a large commuter population, commuters travel to larger centres in Bristol and in South Wales. Its location at the southern end of the Wye Valley, together with its own sights including its castle and racecourse, have contributed to its development as a tourist centre. The Chepstow Chamber of Commerce represents businesses in the town and aims to support and encourage their development. Blue plaques for English Heritage and other groups are made in the town.

Chepstow town centre has over 130 shops within easy walking distance of 1,000 car park spaces. There are 16 hotels, bars and public houses, and 15 restaurants and cafes. The town has Tesco and M&S Foodhall supermarkets, and Screwfix, within or adjoining the town centre, together with a Lidl store at Bulwark and a B & M store close to the motorway junction at Thornwell. The town has one bank and many independent cafes and restaurants. It also has several independent shops, though the family-run department store, Herbert Lewis, closed in 2018 after 140 years. National chains represented include W.H. Smith, Peacocks, Boots, Superdrug, and Poundland. The pedestrianised St Mary's Street contains antique shops, gift shops, an independent book shop, coffee shops and restaurants. There are also regular farmers' markets and produce markets in the town centre. A regular open air weekly market at the racecourse closed in 2014. The town's livestock market closed in the early 1960s.

According to the 2001 Census, Chepstow had relatively high proportions of its population working in the retail and wholesale sectors of the economy (19.6%, compared with 16.3% for Wales as a whole), property services (11.3%, compared with 8.5% across Wales), and transport and communications (9.4% compared with 5.5% across Wales). The proportion working in manufacturing was lower than the average (15.2% compared with 17.3% across Wales), as was the proportion working in health and social work (9.3% compared to 13.0% across Wales). In terms of occupational groups, the proportions of residents in higher status managerial, professional and associate technical posts was higher than average (totalling 44.1% compared with 35.4% across Wales), and the proportions in administrative, personal services and processing work were lower.

In 2018 Chepstow was declared by campaign group Surfers Against Sewage to be the first "Plastic Free Town" in south Wales.

Transport
Chepstow is located close to junction 2 of the M48 motorway, at the western end of the Severn Bridge. The bridge was opened in 1966 and has the second longest span of any bridge in the UK; it replaced the Aust-Beachley ferry. Before the Severn Bridge was opened, the Old Wye Bridge across the River Wye at Chepstow, built in 1816 to replace earlier wooden structures, carried all the road traffic between South West England and South Wales and was the lowest bridging point of the Wye. The M48 motorway now connects Chepstow by road to Newport (18 mi) and Cardiff (31 mi) to the west, and Bristol (18 mi) and London (124 mi) to the east. To the north, the A466 up the Wye valley connects the town with Monmouth (16 mi), and to the north-east the A48 links it with Gloucester (29 mi).

Chepstow railway station is on the main line between Maesteg and Cheltenham Spa. Most connections to Bristol Temple Meads and London Paddington are via Newport or Severn Tunnel Junction (8 mi). Chepstow is serviced by Transport for Wales Rail; the service provided by CrossCountry from Cardiff Central to Nottingham, via Birmingham New Street. The railway bridge also known as "The Great Tubular Bridge" spanning the River Wye between Chepstow and Sedbury was designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel in 1852 as part of the Great Western Railway, but the original structure was replaced in the 1960s. Until 1959, passenger trains also operated up the Wye Valley Railway to Monmouth – this service ceased owing to heavy financial losses. The line at Chepstow was blocked by a landslide on 12 November 2009, following heavy rain.

Chepstow was home to Red & White Services, one of the region's largest bus and coach operators. Their head office and central workshops were at Bulwark from the early 1930s to mid-1980s. Red & White was a major employer in Chepstow for the fifty years it existed. The company became defunct as part of the privatised National Welsh bus company but was re-established as Stagecoach Red & White following the acquisition of the assets of National Welsh by Stagecoach. Although the name Stagecoach Red and White was subsequently dropped, the legal name of Stagecoach South Wales is Red & White Services Ltd.

The nearest major airports to Chepstow are at Bristol (27 mi) and Cardiff (43 mi).

Demographics
The population of Chepstow at the 2021 census was recorded as roughly 11,900. Of this, 23.4% were between the ages of 45 and 59, above the county average of 22.5%. The largest ethnic group is White with 96.4% of the population, below the county average of 96.9%, with the second largest being Asian/Asian British who make up 1.1% of the population, below the county average of 1.3%. The largest religious group is No religion with 47.4% of the population, above the county average of 43.4%, with the second largest being Christian at 45.1%, below the county average of 48.7%.

According to the 2021 census, 9.4% of Chepstow residents could speak, read or write Welsh, 2% could understand spoken Welsh only and 88.6% had no skills in Welsh at all.

Education and health
The town is served by Chepstow School, located on Welsh Street, with over 1,300 pupils. There are four primary schools in the town: The Dell, Pembroke, Thornwell, and St Mary's Roman Catholic. Tutshill and Sedbury, on the English side of the Wye but within walking distance of Chepstow and attracting some pupils from the town, have their own schools, including Wyedean School, and the private preparatory Dean Close St John's in Tutshill.

Chepstow Community Hospital was opened in 2000, having been developed under the United Kingdom Government's Private Finance Initiative. It was built and is operated by Kintra Ltd, at an annual charge of £1.2m to Gwent Healthcare NHS Trust. The hospital building incorporates mementoes from the past, including the old Admiralty portico moulding from the front facade of the former Mount Pleasant Hospital, which was located on an adjacent site now developed as a housing estate.

Religion
In the 2001 census, 72.3% of Chepstow's resident population gave their religion as Christian, with 19.0% stating "no religion". There are several churches in the town. St Mary's Priory Church was founded by about 1072 as a Benedictine priory, and retains its ornamented Norman west entrance doorway, decorated with zig zag and lozenge patterns. The priory was suppressed during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1536, and became the parish church. It was substantially rebuilt during the nineteenth century, and now holds regular services as part of the Church in Wales. The Baptist Church, in Lower Church Street, was built in 1816, by Walter G. Watkin, and later enlarged. The origins of the Methodist Church lie in a visit to the town made by John Wesley in 1762. In 1801, a Methodist Chapel was built in what is now Oxford Street. St Christopher's church (Anglican), and St Mary's Roman Catholic Church, are both located in the Bulwark area.

Culture and regular events
The town holds a biennial community festival, as well as an annual agricultural show and the annual Wassail and Mari Lwyd in January. There is a local Welsh society for the area, Cymdeithas Cymraeg Cas-gwent, Cil-y-coed a'r cyffiniau, holding numerous Welsh language events throughout the year that are open to all. In the early 2000s the community organised major son et lumière pageants covering aspects of local history, using local residents under professional direction. Since 2012, an annual series of "Castell Roc" music events has been held inside Chepstow Castle each August, featuring performances by artists such as Leo Sayer, Dr Hook, Bad Manners, and Jools Holland.

The Chepstow Museum, first established by the Chepstow Society, is housed in an elegant 1796 town house opposite the Castle entrance. Chepstow has no cinema or theatre, although film showings, theatrical and other events regularly take place in the Drill Hall, close to the Castle and riverside area. Community activities also take place in the Palmer Community Centre and Bulwark Community Centre.

The town had, for a short period, its own online local radio station, Chepstow Radio.

Chepstow is twinned with Cormeilles, France.

The town is the base for The Widders Border Morris Men who were formed in 2001. Some of the members were bikers who coined the group's name, claiming they looked like the 'Black Widows', a bike gang from film Every Which Way but Loose. In 2010 the team were invited to represent Wales in a Celtic music festival in France. The black, skull-like face-paint, used by the team members, was originally used to mask identities. The team's foreman Mick Widder has described the group: "We’re from the dark side of Morris dancing. We’re the punk rockers of the morris world. We are drinkers with a dance problem."

Media
Local news and television programmes are provided by BBC Cymru Wales and BBC West on BBC One, and by ITV Cymru Wales and ITV West Country on ITV1. Television signals are from either the Wenvoe TV transmitter, supplemented by a low power relay transmitter situated north east of the town, or the Mendip TV transmitter.

Local radio stations are BBC Radio Wales, BBC Radio Cymru, BBC Radio Bristol and BBC Radio Gloucestershire both can also be heard, Heart South Wales, Nation Radio Wales and Sunshine Radio.

The town is served by the local newspapers, Chepstow Beacon and South Wales Argus

Sport and leisure
Chepstow Racecourse is the leading horse racing facility and course in Wales. It is located on the edge of the town, in the grounds of the ruined Piercefield House. The racecourse was opened in 1926, and became the regular venue of the Welsh National in 1949.

Chepstow Town F.C. was founded in 1878 and as of 2017 play in Division Three of the Welsh Football League. Chepstow RFC was also founded in 1878, by pupils and staff of Chepstow Grammar School. Matches are played at the Upton Memorial Ground, Lower Western Avenue. As of 2017 the team play in Division Three East A of the WRU National League The town also has an athletic Club for archery (St Kingsmark Bowmen), tennis, bowls, cricket and junior football. The 1976 IAAF World Cross Country Championships, won by Carlos Lopes, were held in the town. Two long routes of the National Cycle Network start in Chepstow, including the Celtic Trail (Lôn Geltaidd). Chepstow has also held professional and amateur street cycling events, such as the Chepstow Grand Prix.

The town's leisure centre is located adjoining Chepstow School. The centre is owned by Monmouthshire County Council. Its facilities include an indoor swimming pool and both indoor and outdoor games pitches. Chepstow Harriers running club, founded in the 1880s, meets twice weekly at the centre in addition to scheduled events.

Since its heyday as a centre for the "Wye Tour" in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Chepstow has remained an important centre for tourism. The town has a range of hotels and guest houses. As well as its own attractions, including the castle, the town is close to other attractions including the Royal Forest of Dean, Tintern Abbey and the Wye Valley, the Marriott St Pierre Hotel and Country Club, and the National Diving and Activity Centre at Tidenham. Several long distance trails – the Offa's Dyke Path, the Wye Valley Walk, the Wales Coast Path, and the Gloucestershire Way – pass through, or very close to, the town.

Chepstow Golf Club (now defunct) was founded in 1914. The club disappeared in the 1960s.

Landmarks
Chepstow contains five Grade I listed buildings – the Castle, Priory Church, Town Gate, Port Wall and Old Wye Bridge – and several with Grade II* listed status.

Chepstow Castle
Chepstow Castle overlooks the River Wye, a short distance downhill from the town centre. The Great Tower is the oldest part of the complex and dates from the late 11th century. The castle was extended, both westwards and eastwards, in later centuries, but fell into ruin after the Civil War. There is a large car park in front of the castle, beside the Tourist Information Centre and opposite Chepstow Museum. The castle is under the management of Cadw, and is open to the public every day of the year, apart from four bank holidays around Christmas and New Year. It is entered through the late-12th-century gatehouse, and contains exhibitions on the castle's history. A footpath beside the castle, through the Dell, is the start and finishing stretch of the Wye Valley Walk.

Town Gate and Port Wall
Much of Chepstow's late-13th-century Port Wall remains intact, although the stretch south of the railway line was demolished when the National Shipyard was constructed in 1916. The wall is best seen adjoining the main town car park in Welsh Street, or beside the main A48 road at the top of School Hill. It can also be seen adjoining the Gate House, which was built in 1609 beside the Town Gate at the top (western) end of the High Street. The Town Gate, now a single carriageway roadway controlled by traffic lights, was once the only point of entrance to the town centre other than the bridge below the castle. It was rebuilt in 1524 and has undergone several renovations since then, most recently in 1986. The Gate House and the room above the archway itself are occasionally opened to the public.

Priory Church of St Mary
Chepstow Priory was established in 1067, at the same time as the castle. Its Norman west doorway remains intact, as do some mediaeval and later interior features including Jacobean tombs. The Priory Church of St Mary became the town's parish church after the English Reformation. Its tower dates from the early 18th century, and the entire church was substantially rebuilt and extended in the mid-19th century, a process which destroyed some of its earlier features.

Bridges and the riverside
The Old Wye Bridge below the castle was built in 1816, on the site of earlier wooden bridges. The cast iron structure is noted for its elegance. It now carries a single carriageway road controlled by traffic lights. The eastern end of the bridge, in Gloucestershire, is the start and finish point of the Gloucestershire Way. The riverside area of Chepstow was once an open area of shipyards surrounded by warehouses. It has been landscaped, to incorporate flood defence works, and is now the start and finish point of the Wales Coast Path. The gardens contain a bandstand used for summer concerts. The Chepstow Railway Bridge, slightly downstream, was built to an innovative and functional design by Isambard Kingdom Brunel in 1852. Most of Brunel's structures have since been replaced. The railway bridge runs alongside the A48 road bridge opened in 1988.

Medieval and later buildings
The town contains several notable post-mediaeval buildings. Grade II* listed buildings include: The heyday of the town's prosperity as a trading port in the late 18th and early 19th century is shown by the large number of town houses of that period, many of which are now used for other purposes such as offices and shops. One example is Gwy House, built in 1796 for a leading local merchant, which now houses the museum. The town centre itself features stone carvings, artworks, and information plaques placed in the pavement and walls, installed as part of a regeneration scheme in 2004/05; they illustrate Chepstow's history.
 * Castle Terrace – a row of bay-fronted terraced houses, built in about 1810 on Bridge Street (then called St Anne's Street), the road leading down to the Castle;
 * Powis Almshouses – an L-shaped stone-built block of almshouses at the top of Bridge Street, built in 1721 following a bequest from a locally born vintner, Thomas Powis, who worked in London;
 * Raglan Lodge – a Regency building in the town centre, Beaufort Square, built above a vaulted stone cellar which may have been a town hall or administrative centre for the mediaeval lordship.

Chepstow Racecourse and Piercefield
Chepstow Racecourse was opened in 1926 in the grounds of Piercefield House, 1 mi north of the town centre on the road towards Tintern. Piercefield House itself, a mansion house rebuilt in the late 18th century, is now ruined. Its wooded grounds, overlooking the River Wye, contain landscaped features from the time when visits to the estate were an important component of the "Wye Tour"; they are now incorporated into the Wye Valley Walk.

Notable people
Chepstow was the birthplace of the fraudster and "Popish Plot" informer William Bedloe (1650–1680), and of the physician and satirist James Davis (1706/07–1755). James Stephens (1821–1889), a stonemason who was a supporter of the Chartists and later an influential Australian trade unionist, was born in the town, as was Sir Isambard Owen (1857–1927), a physician who became an academic and a leading figure in the formation of the University of Wales. John Fitchett Marsh (1818–1880), who had been responsible for establishing the first municipal library at Warrington, retired to Hardwick Court at Chepstow in 1873 and wrote on the history of the castle. The entomologist Eleanor Anne Ormerod (1828–1901) was born at nearby Sedbury Park, the house owned by her father, the antiquary George Ormerod. H.E. Fulford (1859–1929), born in Chepstow of Australian parents, joined the British Foreign Service and for several decades occupied important consular posts in China.

Able Seaman William Charles Williams (1880–1915), who was born in Shropshire but raised in Chepstow, was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for gallantry in World War I. A gun from a captured German U-boat was presented to the town to mark his bravery, and stands in the town's main square beside the War Memorial. The neo-Baroque War Memorial itself was designed by local architect Eric Francis (1887–1976), who was also responsible for several notable country houses in the area.

Sportsmen born in the town have included Surrey and Middlesex cricketer Ted Pooley (1842–1907); Eddie Parris (1911–1971), the first black player to play international football for Wales; Olympic gold medal winning show jumper Richard Meade (1938–2015); and two more Wales international footballers, Ollie Burton (born 1941) and Paul Parry (born 1980). In the field of entertainment, locally born figures have included Grant Nicholas (born 1967) of the band Feeder, who grew up in the neighbouring village of Pwllmeyric, and film and television actor Owain Yeoman (born 1978), star of The Mentalist. The actor Leslie Sands lived in Chepstow before his death in 2001.

The writer J. K. Rowling (born 1965), author of the Harry Potter books, lived in the adjoining village of Tutshill from the age of 9, and attended secondary school at Wyedean School. Horticulturalist and writer Adam Alexander maintains a 3.5 acre farm at Itton near Chepstow.

title: Chepstow


text:
List of lists of buildings and structures in Puerto Rico

This is a list of lists of notable buildings and structures in Puerto Rico.

Lists include:
 * List of airports in Puerto Rico
 * List of bridges in Puerto Rico
 * List of bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in Puerto Rico
 * List of bridges documented by the Historic American Engineering Record in Puerto Rico
 * List of Carnegie libraries in Puerto Rico
 * List of casinos in Puerto Rico
 * List of castles in Puerto Rico
 * Churches
 * List of Catholic churches in Puerto Rico
 * List of Anglo-Catholic churches in Puerto Rico (Episcopal churches)
 * List of Methodist churches in Puerto Rico
 * List of convention centers in Puerto Rico
 * List of dams and reservoirs in Puerto Rico
 * List of fire stations in Puerto Rico
 * List of hospitals in Puerto Rico
 * List of hotels in Puerto Rico
 * Lighthouses in Puerto Rico
 * List of Masonic buildings in Puerto Rico
 * List of museums in Puerto Rico
 * List of prisons in Puerto Rico
 * Schools
 * List of high schools in Puerto Rico
 * List of sugar refineries in Puerto Rico
 * List of theaters in Ponce, Puerto Rico


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Hastur

Hastur (The Unspeakable One, The King in Yellow, Him Who Is Not to be Named, Assatur, Xastur, H'aaztre, or Kaiwan) is an entity of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Hastur first appeared in Ambrose Bierce's short story "Haïta the Shepherd" (1891) as a benign god of shepherds. Subsequently Robert W. Chambers used the name in his late 1800s stories to represent both a person and a place associated with several stars, including Aldebaran. H. P. Lovecraft was inspired by Chambers's stories and briefly mentioned Hastur in The Whisperer in Darkness (1930). Later writers have also adapted Hastur in a variety of tales.

Hastur in the mythos
In Bierce's "Haïta the Shepherd", which appeared in the collection Can Such Things Be?, Hastur is more benevolent than he would later appear in August Derleth's mythos stories. Another story in the same collection ("An Inhabitant of Carcosa") referred to the place "Carcosa" and a person "Hali", names which later authors were to associate with Hastur.

In Chambers' The King in Yellow (1895), a collection of horror stories, Hastur is the name of a potentially supernatural character (in "The Demoiselle D'Ys"), a place (in "The Repairer of Reputations"), and mentioned without explanation in "The Yellow Sign". The latter two stories also mention Carcosa, Hali, Aldebaran, and the Hyades, along with a "Yellow Sign" and a play called The King in Yellow.

H. P. Lovecraft read Chambers' book in early 1927 and was so enchanted by it that he added elements of it to his own creations. There are two places in Lovecraft's own writings in which Hastur is mentioned:

I found myself faced by names and terms that I had heard elsewhere in the most hideous of connections—Yuggoth, Great Cthulhu, Tsathoggua, Yog-Sothoth, R'lyeh, Nyarlathotep, Azathoth, Hastur, Yian, Leng, the Lake of Hali, Bethmoora, the Yellow Sign, L’mur-Kathulos, Bran, and the Magnum Innominandum—and was drawn back through nameless aeons and inconceivable dimensions to worlds of elder, outer entity at which the crazed author of the Necronomicon had only guessed in the vaguest way.

 * — H. P. Lovecraft, "The Whisperer in Darkness"

It is unclear from this quote if Lovecraft's Hastur is a person, a place, an object (such as the Yellow Sign), or a deity. This ambiguity is recurrent in Lovecraft's descriptions of mythic entities.

Later in the same story, it is described that the Mi-Go have been attacked by followers of Hastur, and Hastur is an enemy of the Outer Ones whom the Mi-Go serve:

Actually, they have never knowingly harmed men, but have often been cruelly wronged and spied upon by our species. There is a whole secret cult of evil men (a man of your mystical erudition will understand me when I link them with Hastur and the Yellow Sign) devoted to the purpose of tracking them down and injuring them on behalf of monstrous powers from other dimensions. It is against these aggressors—not against normal humanity—that the drastic precautions of the Outer Ones are directed.

 * — H. P. Lovecraft, "The Whisperer in Darkness"

 * In "Supernatural Horror In Literature" (written 1926–27, revised 1933, published in The Recluse in 1927), when telling about "The Yellow Sign" by Chambers, H. P. Lovecraft wrote:

"...after stumbling queerly upon the hellish and forbidden book of horrors the two learn, among other hideous things which no sane mortal should know, that this talisman is indeed the nameless Yellow Sign handed down from the accursed cult of Hastur—from primordial Carcosa, whereof the volume treats..."

 * In Chambers' "The Yellow Sign" the only mentioning of Hastur is:

"'...We spoke of Hastur and of Cassilda...'"

Judging from these two quotes, it is quite possible that H. P. Lovecraft not only recognized Hastur as one of the mythos gods, but even made him so recalling Chambers' book.

Derleth also developed Hastur into a Great Old One, spawn of Yog-Sothoth, the half-brother of Cthulhu, and possibly the Magnum Innominandum. In this incarnation, Hastur has several Avatars:

 * The Feaster from Afar: A black, shriveled, flying monstrosity with tentacles tipped with razor-sharp talons that can pierce a victim's skull and siphon out the brain.
 * The King in Yellow

Anders Fager's "Collected Swedish Cults" features a Stockholm-based coterie known as "The Carcosa Foundation" that worships Hastur.

Hastur is amorphous, but he is said to appear as a vast, vaguely octopoid being, similar to his half-niece Cthylla. In the mythos, Hastur is presented as having "a strange effect on artists and playwrights".

Other appearances
Hastur has appeared in other media. In the light novel and anime series Haiyore! Nyaruko-san, which is based on the Cthulhu mythos, one of the main characters, Hastua, is a Japanized version of and direct reference to Hastur.

In Neil Gaiman's and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens Hastur is the name of a demon. In the TV series adaptation of Good Omens, Hastur is portrayed by Ned Dennehy.

Hastur is the name of a hunter in the video game Identity V who is also known as The Feaster and The King in Yellow.

Hastur also appears as a character in the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

Hastur is also believed to be the King in Yellow in the video game Vampire Survivors. The player also receives the Yellow Sign from them directly.

The short story "Gramma" by Stephen King features a demonic entity named Hastur, who also appeared in the 18th episode of the 1985 "Twilight Zone" adaptation and the 2014 film adaptation, Mercy.

Though not named directly, The King in Yellow is mentioned and connected to Carcosa in the first season of the HBO series True Detective.

In the Doctor Who Virgin New Adventures novel All-Consuming Fire, Hastur the Unspeakable is either one of the names/titles belonging to or the original name of the Great Old One, Fenric.

Hastur appears in the Persona games, as both an enemy and summonable ally.

Hastur is featured on the cover of The King In Yellow in SIGNALIS.

In the sixth novel in Charles Stross Laundry Files, The Annihilation Score (2017), the protagonist is Dr. Dominique "Mo" O'Brien is compelled by her violin to summon The King in Yellow, with poems referencing Hastur and Carcosa.

Hastur (stylized as Hastar) is the first and most beloved offspring of the Goddess of Prosperity, in the 2019 film Tumbbad, who robbed her of her gold and was stopped while attempting to steal her grain.

Hastur the Unspeakable, god of shepherds, appears in Jonathan Maberry's Kagen the Damned series as the god of Hakkia and his chief priest the Witch-King, Gethon Heklan, the King in Yellow. The first novel of the series was published in 2022.

Hastur appears in Cole Frederick's puppetry short film titled "The King in Yellow" released in 2023.

A female version of Hastur appears in the videogame "A Sucker For Love" going by the name of Aster, the game also incorporates the fictional play "The King In Yellow"

title: Hastur