Description
Abergavenny Castle Monmouthshire Wales. Original copper-plate engraved antique print from Francis Grose’s ‘The Antiquities of England and Wales,’ Plate 2 dated 1784.
Abergavenny Castle (Welsh: Castell y Fenni) is a ruined castle in the market town of Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, Wales, established by the Norman lord Hamelin de Balun in about 1087. It was the site of a massacre of Welsh noblemen in 1175 and was attacked during the early 15th century Glyndŵr Rising. William Camden, the 16th-century antiquary, said that the castle “has been oftner stain’d with the infamy of treachery, than any other castle in Wales.”
This original print is from: ‘The Antiquities of England and Wales’ by Francis Grose. Eight volumes published from 1772. Printed in London for Hooper and Wigstead. Artists and engravers names are recorded below each antique print, together with the date of the execution of the engraving. Francis Grose’s interest was in the field of medieval remains, which were beginning to exercise an increasing grip on the public imagination. In 1772, he published the first part of ‘The Antiquities of England and Wales,’ a work which he unashamedly aimed at the popular market. Essentially, it targeted those who wanted to know about antiquities but had neither time nor means to visit them in person, and contained small panoramas of medieval ruins, together with informative text on a separate page. Sometimes the text was taken from books already published, or from information supplied by other antiquaries (both acknowledged); sometimes Grose collated material himself from which he could work up an article. From 1772 onwards, he also toured the country to visit and draw sites for inclusion in The Antiquities. In all, Eight Volumes of the work were published. Thank you to Wikipedia for supplying links and some of the above text.
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