Usk Gleaner and Monmouthshire Record

The publisher of the County Observer, James H. Clark published a monthly, The Usk Gleaner and Monmouthshire Record from August 1875 to the end of 1878.

In this we find a number of old stories, republished and I’ve reproduced Glascoed related stories I found below:

SHEEP SAVAGED

On the 6th of December 1856, Mr Gething of the Rhadyr farm had 30 fine sheep killed and worried by dogs; 14 were found dead in the field, and 14 others were so mangled that they afterwards died, and others were much injured. A week previously, 14 sheep were destroyed belonging to Mr. Thomas Lewis of the Glascoed, by dogs, and 6 belonging to Mr. Williams of Monkswood.

REBECCAISM AT USK.- on the 17th of January, 1862, Charles Morgan, Charles Stockham, and Henry Willetts, three youths, were summoned before the Usk bench to answer a complaint of William Thomas, of Pontypool, of destroying a fence erected by him on a piece of land known as “The Island”, near the town of Usk. It was contended that the fence was removed in consequence of complainant encroaching up the “waste”. The chairman remarked that there was no doubt the lads acted in the matter as the tools of older heads. They had a right to remove the fence if the complainant had encroached, but it would have been better if they had exercised their right, or supposed right, in the day time instead of at night. The case was dismissed.

(An errata was published in the 1st February edition of the Usk Observer stating :

REBECCAISM.-- ”In a case under this head in Usk Petty Sessions, in our last, the name of “Charles” Morgan was given instead of that of his brother George Morgan.)

NICKNAMES

The nicknames given to the inhabitants of different localities would form a curious list. There are Abergavenny bull-dogs, Bristol bugs and Bristol hogs, Builth traitors, Coleford wide-a-wakes, Devonshire dumplings, Dorsetshire hedge-the-cuckoos, Goytrey dandies, Herefordshire white-faces, Monmouth knives, Pirbright savages, Wiltshire moonrakers, and Usk butterflies. An old ditty says “Pontypool is paved wi’ gool, Trosnant is lined with silver, and Pontymoil doth stink with oil”. “Blaenavon Tobacco” means tobacco that is given away; and “Glascoed blacking” is the local name of mud.