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110-472: New Passage was for many years the location of a ferry crossing to and from South Wales, running from Chestle Pill near Pilning to Black Rock at Portskewett in Monmouthshire . The route provided an alternative to the centuries-old Aust ferry two miles (3 km) upstream, known as the "Old Passage". The New Passage, which offered a more direct route to South Wales, was probably in operation from 1630, when

220-444: A blunderbuss , each guard carried a secure timepiece by which departure times at each stage of the journey were strictly regulated. In 1830 mail was carried by train for the first time, on the newly-opened Liverpool and Manchester Railway ; over the next decade the railways replaced mail coaches as the principal means of conveyance (the last mail coach departed from London on 6 January 1846). The first Travelling Post Office (TPO)

330-555: A lottery bond called the Premium Bond was introduced. In the mid-1960s the GPO was asked by the government to expand into banking services which resulted in the creation of the National Giro in 1968. When new forms of communication came into existence in the 19th and early 20th centuries the GPO claimed monopoly rights on the basis that like the postal service they involved delivery from

440-545: A proclamation 'for the settling of the Letter-office of England and Scotland', an event which 'may properly be regarded as the origin of the British post-office'. By this decree, Thomas Witherings (who had been appointed 'Postmaster of England for foreign parts' three years earlier) was empowered to provide for the carriage of private letters at fixed rates 'betwixt London and all parts of His Majesty's dominions'. To this end,

550-483: A sender and to a receiver . The theory was used to expand state control of the mail service into every form of electronic communication possible on the basis that every sender used some form of distribution service. These distribution services were considered in law as forms of electronic post offices. This applied to telegraph and telephone switching stations. In 1846, the Electric Telegraph Company ,

660-545: A 594-yard (543 m) railway pier, improved the facilities for travellers. One year earlier, an engineer engaged on building the pier had the idea of a tunnel under the river. In 1886, the Severn Tunnel opened and the New Passage ferry became redundant. The pier was dismantled within two years, though the beach, promenade and hotel remained popular with day trippers for many years afterwards. The railway tunnel passes under

770-659: A bell to attract custom was adopted by the Post Office and went on to be employed in major cities until the mid-19th century. In 1761 permission was given for the establishment of penny-post arrangements elsewhere in the realm, to function along the same lines as the London office, if they could be made financially viable; by the end of the century there were penny-post systems operating in Birmingham, Bristol, Dublin, Edinburgh and Manchester (to be joined by Glasgow and Newcastle-upon-Tyne in

880-541: A concerted effort was made to maintain a regular postal system for the conveyance of royal and government despatches (in times of peace as well as in time of war). To oversee the system, the king appointed Brian Tuke to serve as 'Master of the Postes'. By the 1550s five post roads were in place, connecting London with Dover , Edinburgh , Holyhead (via Chester ), Milford Haven (via Bristol ) and Plymouth . (A sixth post road, to Norwich via Colchester , would be added in

990-706: A contemporary report that Charles had a "narrow escape of being taken near the Black Rock" in July 1645 and suggested that some of Charles's party had crossed the Passage on the evening of 24 July "probably sent purposely to mislead the enemy [...] and the result was death by drowning of the pursuers". In 1718 the New Passage ferry service was restarted by the Lewis family of St. Pierre, Monmouthshire , allowing it to be used by mail and passenger coaches between Bristol and south Wales. For much of

1100-621: A court ruling obliged the London Penny Post to come under the authority of the Postmaster General. Although now part of the GPO, the London Penny Post continued to operate entirely independently of the General (or 'Inland') Post until 1854 (when the two systems were combined). An attempt by Charles Povey to set up a rival halfpenny post in 1709 was halted after several months' operation; however Povey's practice of having letter-carriers ring

1210-516: A crossing, though in the event the company failed to raise the capital to build a railway. A subsequent scheme, surveyed and engineered by Brunel and completed by his assistant Brereton , was opened in 1863 as the Bristol and South Wales Union Railway , using the New Passage ferry to cross the Severn to Portskewett. New Passage Pier railway station , a rebuilt New Passage Hotel, a promenade, tea rooms , and

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1320-532: A fee. The trade in these 'ship letters' was acknowledged (and legitimised) in the Post Office Acts of 1657 and 1660. Attempts were made to levy Post Office fees on these letters and 'ship letter money' was offered to captains for each letter given to a postmaster on arrival in England in order for these charges to be applied; however they were under no legal obligation to comply and the majority of ship letters evaded

1430-430: A hand bell. While postmasters were not obliged to deliver items to places outside the boundary, they could agree to do so on payment of an extra fee. In the 1780s, Britain's General Post network was revolutionised by theatrical impresario John Palmer 's idea of using mail coaches in place of the longstanding use of post horses. After initial resistance from the postal authorities, a trial took place in 1784, by which it

1540-409: A horse and cart or waggon, while the universities, along with certain municipal and other corporations, maintained their own correspondence networks. Many letters went by foot-post rather than on horseback. Footposts or runners were employed by many towns, cities and other communities, and had been for many years. A 16th-century footpost would cover around 30 miles per day, on average. At the time of

1650-485: A late Roman temple on Portskewett Hill, and many coins of the 3rd and 4th centuries have been found. The name Portskewett is generally believed to derive from the Welsh Porth-is-Coed , meaning "the harbour below the wood ", or alternatively "the harbour of the area below the wood" - that is, the post-Roman cantref of Gwent Is Coed, centred on Caerwent about 3 miles away. An alternative derivation

1760-477: A more efficient system was put in place (albeit temporarily) to aid communications during his war with Scotland : a number of post houses were established at twenty-mile intervals along the Great North Road , between London and Berwick , to provide the king's messengers with fresh horses for each stage of the journey; in this way they were able to travel up to a hundred miles a day. Under King Henry VIII

1870-543: A regular mail-carrying service in exchange for a fee or subsidy. In the following century, packet services out of Falmouth began to sail to the West Indies, North America and other transatlantic destinations. Packet boats, however, were not the only means of conveying letters overseas: there had always been the option of sending them by merchant ship, and coffee houses had long been accustomed to receiving letters and packages on behalf of ships' captains, who would carry them for

1980-506: A regular public postal service came the need for waterborne mail services (carrying letters to and from Ireland, continental Europe and other destinations) to be placed on a more regular footing. ' Packet boats ', offering a regular scheduled mail service, were already in use for the passage between Holyhead and Dublin; but for letters to and from the Continent the post was entrusted to messengers, who would make their own travel arrangements. This

2090-544: A system for the conveyance of foreign dispatches had been set up, organised by Flemish merchants in the City of London ; but in 1558, after a dispute arose between Italian, Flemish and English merchants on the matter, the Master of the King's Posts was granted oversight of it instead. In 1619, James I appointed a separate Postmaster General 'for foreign parts', granting him (and his appointees)

2200-441: A team of four horses, rather than six as was usual for a stage coach at that time). The long-established practice of 'riding post' was acknowledged through the provision of four seats inside the coach for passengers. The mail bags were carried in a locked box at the back, above which sat a scarlet-coated guard. While the coaches and coachmen were provided by contractors, the guards worked for the Post Office. As well as two pistols and

2310-551: A totally separate publicly owned corporation the following year as a result of the British Telecommunications Act 1981 . In 1986 the Post Office Counters business was made functionally separate from Royal Mail Letters and Royal Mail Parcels (the latter being rebranded as ' Parcelforce '). At the start of the 21st century the Post Office became a public limited company (initially called 'Consignia plc'), which

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2420-466: A wooden pier, where the passengers would get off before climbing aboard the ferries. The pier was severely damaged by fire in 1881 and demolished after the Severn Tunnel opened in 1886, but parts can still be seen at low tide. At Black Rock a traditional method of fishing for salmon with lave nets is practised. The fishermen, who come from local villages, are the last such in Wales. They actively promote

2530-424: Is a matter of general concernment, and of great advantage, as well for the preservation of trade and commerce as otherwise". To begin with the Post Office was again farmed, nominally to Henry Bishop , but the deal was bankrolled by John Wildman (a gentleman of dubious repute, who kept a tight rein on his investment). Two years later Wildman was imprisoned, implicated in a plot against the King, whereupon Bishop sold

2640-608: Is a village and community (parish) in Monmouthshire , south east Wales . It is located four miles south west of Chepstow and one mile east of Caldicot , in an archaeologically sensitive part of the Caldicot Levels on the Welsh shore of the Severn Estuary . The Second Severn Crossing passes overhead carrying the M4 motorway . The community includes Sudbrook , Crick and Leechpool. At

2750-503: Is also the name of the electoral ward , coterminous with the community. The ward elects a county councillor to Monmouthshire County Council . The Welsh Conservatives ' Peter Fox has been councillor since 1999 and is leader of the county council. General Post Office The General Post Office ( GPO ) was the state postal system and telecommunications carrier of the United Kingdom until 1969. Established in England in

2860-402: Is from Porth Ysgewydd , the port of the elder wood. According to tradition, in about the 6th century Caradog Freichfras , king of Gwent , moved his llys or court from Caerwent to Portskewett, where there was a strongly flowing fresh water spring which only dried up later when the Severn Tunnel was built. Alternatively, the court may have been based at nearby Sudbrook . Portskewett

2970-426: Is mentioned in ancient Welsh stories as one of the three chief ports of Wales . A Welsh poem of around the 7th century, Moliant Cadwallon , describes it as "beautiful Porth Esgewin , the estuary on the border", and the medieval Welsh phrase meaning from one end of the country to another translates as "from Porth Wygyr to Portskewett". The harbour later silted up. It is now a marshy area at Caldicot Pill, close to

3080-738: The Leeward Islands was enjoined. The Irish post at this time operated as part of the GPO under a Deputy Postmaster General based in Dublin; but in 1784 an Act was passed by the Parliament of Ireland providing for an independent Post Office in Ireland under its own Postmaster General (an arrangement that remained in place until 1831). The established post roads in Britain ran to and from London. The use of other roads required government permission (for example, it

3190-525: The Post Office Act 1969 , which transferred its assets to the Post Office , so changing it from a Department of State to a statutory corporation . Responsibility for telecommunications was given to Post Office Telecommunications , the successor of the GPO Telegraph and Telephones department. In 1980, the telecommunications and postal sides were split prior to British Telecommunications ' conversion into

3300-462: The River Severn from a point just south of New Passage. The engineer Thomas Telford , after surveying the crossing, described it in his report as "one of the most forbidding places at which an important ferry was ever established - a succession of violent cataracts formed in a rocky channel exposed to the rapid rush of a tide which has scarcely an equal". The river between New Passage and Black Rock

3410-718: The Royal Mail Steam Packet Company ran ships out of Southampton to the West Indies and South America, the British and North American Royal Mail Steam-Packet Company (aka the Cunard Line ) covered the North Atlantic route, while the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company provided services on eastward routes to the Mediterranean, India and Australia. From 1840 vessels carrying mail under Admiralty contract had

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3520-723: The Second Severn Crossing and industrial sites , and crossed by power cables and railway lines, including the entrance to the Severn Tunnel. Archaeological investigations have revealed wetland structures, including fish traps , with dates from the 6th century onwards. The uneven ground south of the village church is shown on some older maps as "Harold’s Field". According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , in 1065 Earl Harold of Wessex , having defeated Gruffydd ap Llywelyn and conquered areas around Hereford and down

3630-477: The Spanish Armada every parish was by royal command required to provide a footpost, and every town a horse-post, to help convey news in the event of an imminent invasion. By the early 1600s there were two options for couriers using the post system: they could either ride 'through-post', carrying the correspondence the full distance; or they could use the 'post of the packet', whereby the letters were carried by

3740-519: The St. Pierre estate, and was held by the Lewis family of St. Pierre. It declined in importance after the Norman period and for many centuries it was an agricultural village of no distinction, although it does appear that some iron mining continued near the village until at least the 17th century. In 1662 Thomas Lewis of St. Pierre, lord of the manor , granted the right to mine iron in the manor to Henry Rumsey. By

3850-614: The Strowger system for small and medium cities and towns. The telephone systems of Jersey and the Isle of Man , obtained from the NTC were offered for sale to the respective governments of the islands. Both initially refused, but the States of Jersey did eventually take control of their island's telephones in 1923. On 27 July 1896, Guglielmo Marconi gave the first demonstration of wireless telegraphy from

3960-620: The War of the Spanish Succession ). The distribution network was centred on the General Letter Office in London (which was on Threadneedle Street prior to the Great Fire of London , after which it moved first to Bishopsgate and then to Lombard Street in 1678). The incoming post arrived each week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays; it was sorted and stamped : London letters went to

4070-452: The sole privilege of carrying foreign correspondence to and from London. (The separate Postmaster General appointments were consolidated in 1637, but the 'foreign' and 'inland' postal services remained separate in terms of administration and accounting until the mid-19th century). It was not until 1635 that a general or public post was properly established, for inland letters as for foreign ones. On 31 July that year, King Charles I issued

4180-426: The 'windows' where members of the public were able to collect them from the office in person (once they had paid the requisite fee), while 'Country letters' were dispatched along the relevant post road. The outgoing post went on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Postage was payable by the recipient (rather than the sender) and depended on the length of the letter and the distance it had travelled; each individual charge

4290-459: The 12th century a permanent body of messengers had been formed within the Royal Household of King Henry I , for the conveyance of royal and official correspondence. The messengers delivered their messages in person, each travelling on his own horse and taking time as needed for rest and refreshment (including stopping overnight if the length of journey required it). Under Edward IV , however,

4400-524: The 17th century, the GPO was a state monopoly covering the dispatch of items from a specific sender to a specific receiver (which was to be of great importance when new forms of communication were invented); it was overseen by a Government minister , the Postmaster General . Over time its remit was extended to Scotland and Ireland, and across parts of the British Empire . The GPO was abolished by

4510-621: The 1830s). In 1801 the cost of posting a letter within the central London area was doubled; thenceforward the London District Post was known as the 'Two-penny Post' until its amalgamation into the General Post 53 years later. During the reign of King William III , the General Post Office created a network of 'receiving-houses', in London and the larger provincial towns, where senders could submit items. A Scottish Post Office

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4620-421: The 18th century, a regular ferry service crossed the Severn estuary from Black Rock to New Passage on the Bristol side, carrying passengers, cattle and iron ore. The Black Rock Hotel served travellers and became a popular local entertainment venue; it was later destroyed by fire. In 1863, the Bristol and South Wales Union Railway built a branch from the main line to Black Rock . Trains would travel out onto

4730-628: The 1970s. The village lost its railway station (on the Newport to Gloucester line) when it was closed under the Beeching Axe in 1964. Black Rock, on the Severn Estuary immediately south east of the village, has been an important crossing point of the River Severn for many centuries. Numerous coins found in the mud show that it was in constant use throughout the Roman period, on the route between Aquae Sulis ( Bath ) and Venta Silurum ( Caerwent ). By

4840-402: The 19th century the village was in decline. Between 1801 and 1861 the population of the parish, which includes Sudbrook, fell from 216 to 175. However, it expanded rapidly later in the 19th century, as housing was built for workers on the Severn Tunnel and with industrial development at nearby Caldicot. At the turn of the 20th century the population was some 900, steadily rising to about 1,300 by

4950-453: The Admiralty took over managing the long-distance routes out of Falmouth, while services to and from Ireland and the continent were increasingly put out to commercial tender. Eventually, in 1837, the Admiralty took over control of the whole operation (and with it the remaining Post Office vessels). Subsequently, contracts for carrying mail began to be awarded to new large-scale shipping lines :

5060-719: The British Isles (the nations of which had been unified under Oliver Cromwell as a result of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms ), stating that 'there shall be one General Post-Office, and one office stiled the Postmaster-Generall of England and Comptroller of the Post-Office'. The Act also reasserted the postal monopoly for letter delivery and for post-horses; and it set new rates both for carriage of letters and for 'riding post'. During

5170-519: The Commonwealth, what had been a weekly post service to and from London was increased to a thrice-weekly service: letters were despatched from the General Letter Office in London every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday evening, while the inbound post arrived early in the morning on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Usually the recipient of the post paid the fee (and had the right to refuse to accept

5280-509: The Crown). At Dover merchant ships were regularly employed to convey letters to and from the continent . A similar system connected Holyhead and Milford to Ireland (and by the end of the 16th century a packet service had been established on the Holyhead to Dublin route). Private citizens could make use of the post-horse network, if they could afford it (in 1583 they had to pay twopence per mile for

5390-600: The GPO (in particular the Hull Telephones Department (now privatised) and the telephone system of Guernsey ). The GPO took over the company on 1 January 1912; transferring 1,565 exchanges and 9,000 employees at a cost of £12,515,264. The GPO installed several automatic telephone exchanges from several vendors in trials at Darlington on 10 October 1914 and Dudley on 9 September 1916 ( rotary system ), Fleetwood (relay exchange from Sweden), Grimsby (Siemens), Hereford (Lorimer) and Leeds (Strowger). The GPO then selected

5500-516: The GPO came to be viewed less as a revenue-raising body and more as a public service . The Post Office Savings Bank was introduced in 1861, when there were few banks outside major towns. By 1863, 2,500 post offices were offering a savings service . Gradually more financial services were offered by post offices, including government stocks and bonds in 1880, insurance and annuities in 1888, and war savings certificates in 1916. In 1909 old age pensions were introduced, payable at post offices. In 1956

5610-607: The King, another witness in the same legal case gave evidence that the incident had in fact involved a group of twelve Royalists who "in haste to pass" in November 1644 had forced the boatmen to take them across at low tide. The antiquary Octavius Morgan , on investigating these stories, found that the Iter Carolinum and the diary of Richard Symonds proved that Charles had intended to use the Black Rock crossing to reach Bristol on 24 July 1645, but had been dissuaded. Morgan however noted

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5720-615: The New Passage Ferry Company was formed. The ferry was said to have been discontinued between 1645 and 1718. There is a tale, often repeated in 19th century and later guidebooks, that during the English Civil War King Charles was chased across the river from Portskewett: the pursuing Roundheads were drowned after being landed at low tide on the English Stones by the boatmen, after which Cromwell ordered

5830-502: The New Passage". Nevertheless, the ferry was compared to the Aust crossing the most direct route into South Wales. In 1996 the Second Severn Crossing road bridge was completed, virtually along the same line as the Severn Tunnel. The bridge, the longest in the UK, carries M4 motorway traffic. The hotel was opened in 1863 to serve railway passengers, replacing the earlier New Passage House inn. When

5940-450: The Peace had been ordered to arrange appointment of two to three foot-posts in every parish for the conveyance of letters), though in practice precise details were often left to the local postmaster. On the return journey to London, bags of letters would be picked up from each post-house on the way, and taken to the General Letter Office to be sorted for despatch. With the establishment of

6050-595: The Post Master General obtained a court judgement that telephone conversations were, technically, within the remit of the Telegraph Act. The General Post Office then licensed all existing telephone networks. The effective nationalisation of the UK telecommunications industry occurred in 1912 with the takeover of the National Telephone Company which left only a few municipal undertakings independent of

6160-459: The Post Office.) The expansion of the service beyond the main post-roads was in no small part due to the enterprise of the Deputy post-masters themselves, who were allowed to profit from branch services which they established and operated. In this way, the network of 'by-posts' greatly expanded in the 1670s: in 1673 Blome could write that 'there is scarce any Market-Town of note [which does not have]

6270-486: The Postmaster General. Alongside money orders, postal orders were introduced in 1881, which were cheaper and easier to cash. Postal orders and money orders were vital at this time for transactions between small businesses, as well as individuals, because bank transfer facilities were only available to major businesses and for larger sums of money. In 1840 the Uniform Penny Post was introduced, which incorporated

6380-730: The Research Section of the Telegraph Office, which had its origins in innovative areas of work being pursued by staff in the Engineering Department. In the 1920s a dedicated research station was set up by the GPO seven miles away in Dollis Hill ; during the Second World War the world's first electronic computer, ' Colossus ', was designed and constructed there by Tommy Flowers and other GPO engineers. The Telegraph Office

6490-455: The UK. The responsibility for the 'electric telegraphs' was officially transferred to the GPO in 1870. Overseas telegraphs did not fall within the monopoly. The private telegraph companies that already existed were bought out. The new combined telegraph service had 1,058 telegraph offices in towns and cities and 1,874 offices at railway stations. 6,830,812 telegrams were transmitted in 1869 producing revenue of £550,000. London's Central Office in

6600-400: The Wye, and was in the process of constructing a building on the site which he could use as a base for hunting when it was attacked and destroyed by a force under Caradog ap Gruffydd , King of Gwent . Harold never had the opportunity to take his revenge; in January 1066 he became king of England, and later that year was killed at the Battle of Hastings . Archaeologists consider it likely that

6710-422: The benefit of the conveyance of letters to and fro'; he went on to list, County by County, both the 'Stages' on the post-roads (of which there were over 140) and the Post-towns on the branch roads (which by then numbered over 380 in total), where members of the public were able to leave letters with a Post-Master 'to be sent as directed'. Before long moves were made to incorporate the by-posts (and their income) into

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6820-400: The carved crosses on the blocked up back doorway could be even older. The church has been restored and altered on a number of occasions. The small windows in the upper part of the tower, for example, are typical of the 16th century. In the corner of the churchyard can be seen the steps which formed the base of a medieval churchyard cross. From Norman times until 1919, the village was part of

6930-399: The century the ferry rights, fishery and the inn at New Passage were rented from the Lewis family by John Hoggard. Amongst the travellers to use the ferry was Charles Wesley , who had a lucky escape in 1743, when his ship almost foundered in stormy weather. By the late 18th century the main mail coach route between Bristol and Milford Haven used the New Passage and by the end of the century

7040-463: The country. The 1850s also saw the widespread introduction of red-painted post boxes where the public could deposit their outgoing mail. Few other organisations (either of state or of commerce) could rival the early Victorian Post Office in the extent of its national coverage. Its counters began to be relied upon for providing other government services (e.g. the issuing of licences of various types); and increasingly (and significantly) in this period,

7150-418: The crossing rivalled the Old Passage route. In 1825 the New Passage Association formed, using the 30-ton steamboat "St Pierre". However, the sponsorship by the Dukes of Beaufort of the Aust route, with faster boats and a pier, meant that by 1830 mail coaches were diverted there, and the New Passage declined. In the 1840s the ferry was purchased by the Bristol and South West Junction Railway company for use as

7260-417: The early 17th century.) Each post-house on the road was staffed by a postmaster , whose main responsibility was to provide the horses; he would also provide a guide to accompany the messenger as far as the next post house (and then see to the return of the horses afterwards). In practice most post-houses were established at roadside inns and the innkeeper served as postmaster (in return for a small salary from

7370-431: The eastern edge of the village, in a privately owned field opposite Black Rock Road, very near to the Leechpool turn, is evidence of a significant neolithic chambered tomb or long barrow . A small group of puddingstones mark the entrance of the site known as Heston Brake. Human skeletons, cattle bones and some pottery were discovered in the chamber when it was excavated in 1888. The stones can be reached by following

7480-424: The establishment of the Penny Post, the only location where letters could be posted in London was the General Letter Office in Lombard Street .) The receiving-houses were often found in public houses, coffee houses or other retail premises. Deliveries were made six or eight times a day in central London (and a minimum of four times a day in the outskirts). The innovation was a great success, and within two years

7590-401: The extra charges. In 1680 William Dockwra and Robert Murray founded the 'Penny Post', which enabled letters and parcels to be sent cheaply to and from destinations in and around London. A flat fee of a penny was charged for sending letters or parcels up to a pound in weight within an area comprising the City of London, the City of Westminster and the Borough of Southwark ; while two-pence

7700-517: The ferries had to then cross the head of another channel, the Shoots, through which the current was so strong that they were often pulled down it by the ebb tide: all these difficulties meant that the passage was uncertain for around five hours a day. It was these irregularities in the service that led to the General Post Office eventually transferring mail back to the Old Passage: by 1834 it was found that mail coaches were arriving late at Swansea four times out of five, "almost wholly caused by delays at

7810-399: The ferries to cease operation. This story originated in a deposition given by Giles Gilbert of Shirenewton during the course of a 1720s legal case regarding rights to operate the ferry, and which was later printed by William Coxe in his 1801 Historical Tour of Monmouthshire . While Gilbert claimed to be "credibly informed" that a group of Parliamentarian soldiers had perished while pursuing

7920-493: The ferry closed it continued to prosper as a privately owned public house. In 1921 the hotel was the location of experiments by the inventor H.G. Matthews in the projection of moving films with a sound track. The hotel was closed in 1973. It was then sold by the Bracey family, and the building was left empty, until ravaged by the elements and neglect, it was finally demolished in the late 1970s. A small luxurious housing development

8030-417: The first decade of nationalized telegraphy created two levels of service. High-status circuits catering to the state, international trade, sporting life, and imperial business. Low-status circuits directed toward the local and the provincial. These distinct telegraphic orbits were connected to different types of telegraph instruments operated by differently gendered telegraphists. 1909 saw the establishment of

8140-456: The fishery as a tourist attraction, with the aim of maintaining its history and tradition. Demonstrations of the lave net fishing are given on certain days from the picnic site. The estuary has one of the highest tidal ranges in the world (traditionally reported as the second highest though more recently reckoned to be third highest ), which enables the fishermen to wade out at low tide with nets on shoulders to traditional fishing grounds, with

8250-412: The guides from one post house to the next in a cotton-lined leather bag (although this method was only available for royal, government or diplomatic correspondence). The guides at this time were provided with a post horn , which they had to sound at regular intervals or when encountering others on the road (other road users were expected to give way to the post riders ). At the start of the 16th century

8360-503: The horse, plus fourpence per stage for the guide), but it was primarily designed for the relaying of state and royal correspondence, or for the conveyance from one place to another of individuals engaged on official state business (who paid a reduced rate). Private correspondence was often sent using common carriers at this time, or with others who regularly journeyed from place to place (such as travelling pedlars ); towns often made use of local licensed carriers, who plied their trade using

8470-475: The hunting lodge would have been built on the same site as Caradog Freichfras' earlier court. A geophysical survey carried out at the end of 2005 revealed extensive remains in the area. In May 2007, an excavation was carried out for the Channel 4 TV programme Time Team , broadcast on 30 March 2008. The excavation revealed that a Norman fortified tower house had existed on the site, probably contemporaneous with

8580-478: The inhabitants of the nation. At that time there were 182 Deputy Post-Masters (or 'Deputies') in England [and Wales], most of whom were stationed at the 'Stages' or stops which lay along the six main post-roads; and under them were sub-Post-masters , based at market towns which were not on the main post-roads but to which the service had been extended. (The sub-Post-masters, unlike the Deputies, were not employed by

8690-459: The item if they did not wish to pay); the charge was based on the distance the item had been carried so the Post Office had to keep a separate account for each item. After the Restoration , the Post Office Act 1660 ( 12 Cha. 2 . c. 35) was passed (the previous Cromwellian Act being void), confirming the arrangements in place for the Post Office, and the post of Postmaster General, and emphasizing

8800-526: The latter's accession to the throne as King James II , this income became part of the hereditary revenues of the Crown ; and subsequently, under the growing scrutiny of HM Treasury , the postal service came increasingly to be viewed as a source of government income (as seen in the Post Office (Revenues) Act 1710 , which increased postal charges and levied tax on the income in order to finance Britain's involvement in

8910-566: The lease on to the King's gunpowder manufacturer, Daniel O'Neill ; after the latter's death, his widow the Countess of Chesterfield served out the remainder of the original seven-year term (so becoming the first female Postmaster General). Meanwhile, under the terms of a 1663 Act of Parliament, the 'rents, issues and profits' of the Post Office had been settled by the King on his brother, the Duke of York, to provide for his support and maintenance. Following

9020-485: The loosely hung net. The handle is called the rock staff and is made of ash or willow and the arms are hinged to the rock staff and are kept in position while fishing with a wooden spreader called the headboard. In 2020 the lave fishermen of Black Rock were featured on BBC One's Countryfile programme. In 2021, the fishermen reduced their activities as a result of what they claimed to be unfair pressure from Natural Resources Wales to reduce their catch. Portskewett

9130-517: The mail bags from one post-house to the next; the postmaster at the next post-house would then record the time of arrival, before transferring the bags to a new horse, ridden by a new post-boy, for the next stage of the journey. On the outbound journey from London, the mail for each Stage (and its associated Post-towns) was left at the relevant post-house. Arrangements for its onward delivery varied somewhat from place to place. Witherings had envisaged using 'foot-posts' for this purpose (in 1620 Justices of

9240-512: The messengers appointed by the said Thomas Witherings', thus establishing a monopoly, which (under the auspices of the Royal Mail ) would remain in place until 2006. Under the Commonwealth the Post Office was farmed to John Manley and John Thurloe , successively. In 1657 an Act of Parliament entitled Postage of England, Scotland and Ireland Settled set up a postal system for the whole of

9350-501: The national network: 'Riding Surveyors' were appointed in 1682, to travel with the post and scrutinise the Deputies' income and activity at each Stage (particularly in relation to by-letters); in later years the Surveyors served as the GPO's inspectorate , tasked with maintaining efficiency and consistency across the network (until they were finally disbanded in the 1930s). It was usual for each postmaster to employ post-boys to ride with

9460-455: The nearby church, and reached by a creek off the Severn. However, no conclusive evidence was found of a Saxon building, which would have been built of wood. After the Norman conquest the area became a " hardwick " or cattle ranch. The parish church of St Mary is a Grade I listed building . The original parts of the church date back to the late 11th century and are made of local limestone ;

9570-503: The network of post towns served by the General Post, and at the same time did much to reform its workings. In 1772 the Court of the King's Bench ruled that letters ought to be delivered directly to recipients within the boundaries of each post town at no additional cost. Often a messenger with a locked satchel would be employed by the postmaster to deliver and receive items of mail around town; he would alert people to his presence by ringing

9680-548: The new arrangement, the King commanded 'all his postmasters, upon all the roads of England, to have ready in their stables one or two horses [...] to carry such messengers, with their portmantles , as shall be imployed in the said service', and they were forbidden from hiring out these horses to others on days when the mail was due. Furthermore, it was enjoined that (with a few specific exceptions) 'no other messenger or messengers, footpost or footposts, shall take up, carry, receive or deliver any letter or letters whatsoever, other than

9790-436: The packet ship services. Since the 1780s these had been run on behalf of the Post Office by private contractors, who depended on supplementary income from fee-paying passengers in order to make a profit; but in the 19th-century steamships began to lure the passengers away. At some considerable cost the Post Office resolved to build and operate its own fleet of steam vessels, but the service became increasingly inefficient. In 1823

9900-475: The privilege of being badged and designated as Royal Mail Ships (RMS). In 1838 the Money Order Office was established, to provide a secure means of transferring money to people in different parts of the country (or world), and to discourage people from sending cash by post. The money order system had first been introduced as a private enterprise by three Post Office clerks in 1792, with the permission of

10010-422: The public and economic benefits of a General Post system: "Whereas for the maintenance of mutual correspondencies, and prevention of many inconveniences happening by private posts, several public post-offices have been heretofore erected for carrying and recarrying of letters by post to and from all parts and places within England, Scotland, and Ireland, and several posts beyond the seas, the well-ordering whereof

10120-404: The public footpath accessed via the kissing gate which is situated on the left about 150 metres (160 yd) from the main road toward Leechpool. In his 1954 Monmouthshire Sketch Book Hando writes: "Garn Llwyd, Gwern-y-Cleppa and Heston Brake are our three outstanding dolmens". There is some evidence of a Roman villa , with possible British Iron Age antecedents. There are also remains of

10230-460: The rest of the realm). Witherings was required to extend the new system to other post roads 'as soon as possibly may be' (beginning with the routes to Oxford and Bristol, and to Colchester, Norwich and Yarmouth); and provision was also made for the establishment of 'bye-posts' to run to and from places not directly served by the post road system (such as Lincoln and Hull). The new system was fully and profitably running by 1636. In order to facilitate

10340-542: The roof of the Telegraph Office in St. Martin's Le Grand. The development of radio links for sending telegraphs led to the Wireless Telegraphy Act 1904 , which granted control of radio waves to the General Post Office, who licensed all senders and receivers. This placed the Post Office in a position of control over radio and television broadcasting as those technologies were developed. By 1900 house-to-house mail delivery

10450-455: The royal proclamation instructed him to establish 'a running post, to run night and day', initially between London and Edinburgh, London and Holyhead and London and Plymouth, 'for the advancement of all His Majesty's subjects in their trade and correspondence'. (A similar system, running between London and Dover, had already been established by Witherings as part of his administration of the foreign posts, and he himself had proposed its extension to

10560-468: The two key innovations of a uniform postal rate, which cut administrative costs and encouraged use of the system, and adhesive pre-paid stamp. Packets (weighing up to 16 ounces (450 g)) could also be sent by post, the cost of postage varying with the weight. The reforms were devised and overseen by Rowland Hill , having been initially proposed in Parliament by Robert Wallace MP . A book post service

10670-402: The water up to their waists. The net is then opened and lowered into the outgoing tide which rushes through the net. With his fingers placed at the bottom meshes of the net, the fisherman then waits for the fish to hit the net. The net is made in a traditional way by means of a Y-shaped structure consisting of two arms called rimes which are made from locally cut willow that acts as a frame work to

10780-523: The world's first public telegraph company, was established in the UK and developed a nationwide communications network. Several other private telegraph companies soon followed. The Telegraph Act 1868 granted the Postmaster General the right to acquire inland telegraph companies in the United Kingdom and the Telegraph Act 1869 conferred on the Postmaster General a monopoly in telegraphic communication in

10890-648: Was 11,200 feet wide at high water and 8,600 feet at low water, in comparison to figures of 6,800 and 4,700 feet for the Old Passage route. The crossing was complicated by the fact that, apart from six hours a day around high tide, two-thirds of the passage was through a channel between the English Stones and the Dun sandbank through which the ebb tide flowed so quickly that "a passage [could not] be made against it except in strong and favourable winds". Even after leaving this channel

11000-478: Was calculated in London and entered into a book, which went with the letters on the road, indicating the amounts due from each postmaster for the letters delivered into his care. At first the new postal network was not especially well publicised; but in his 1673 publication Britannia , Richard Blome sought to remedy this by describing in some detail the geographical disposition of the new 'general Post-Office' , which he called an 'exceeding great conveniency' for

11110-413: Was charged for items posted or delivered in the surrounding 'country' area (which included places such as Hackney, Newington, Lambeth and Islington). The Penny Post letter-carriers operated from seven main sorting offices around London, which were supplemented by between four and five hundred 'receiving houses' in all the principal streets in the area, where members of the public could post items. (Prior to

11220-654: Was created on the resulting land. As of 2009, 31 species of seabird had been recorded in the Severn Beach / New Passage area, including Cory's shearwater , Sooty shearwater and Balearic shearwaters , white-bellied storm petrel (1st British record), 4 species of Diver including Pacific Diver , all four Northern Hemisphere skuas , seven species of tern and five species of alcid . 51°34′26″N 2°39′36″W  /  51.5739°N 2.66°W  / 51.5739; -2.66 Portskewett#Black Rock Portskewett ( Welsh : Porthsgiwed or Porthysgewin )

11330-436: Was demonstrated that a mail coach departing from Bristol at 4pm would regularly arrive in London at 9 o'clock the following morning: a day and a half quicker than the post horses. As a result, the conveyance of letters by mail coach, under armed guard, was approved by Act of Parliament. Mail coaches were similar in design to the passenger-carrying stage coaches , but were smaller, lighter and more manoeuvrable (being pulled by

11440-586: Was established in 1695 (although the post-road to Edinburgh continued to be managed from London); in 1710 the Scottish and English establishments were united by statute . By virtue of the same Act of Parliament (the Post Office (Revenues) Act 1710 ), the functions of the 'general letter office and post office' in the City of London were set out, and the establishment of 'chief letter offices' in Edinburgh, Dublin, New York and

11550-487: Was far from reliable, so in the 1630s Thomas Witherings set about establishing a regular Dover-Calais packet service. By the end of the century additional packet services had been established between Harwich (off the Yarmouth post road) and Helvoetsluys , between Dover and Ostend / Nieuport , and between Falmouth and Corunna . The packet services were generally arranged by contract with an agent, who would commit to provide

11660-408: Was introduced in 1837, and these began to be widely used enabling mail to be sorted in transit; TPO operation was greatly aided by the invention in 1852 of a trackside ' mail-bag apparatus ' which enabled bags to be collected and deposited en route . By the 1860s the Post Office had contracts with around thirty different rail companies. The development of marine steam propulsion inevitably affected

11770-417: Was introduced in 1848, and parcel post in 1883; that same year the term 'letter-carrier' was replaced with ' postman ' in the GPO's official nomenclature. By the 1850s the postal system was described as having become 'universal all over the three kingdoms: no village, however insignificant, being without its receiving-house'. In 1855 a network of 920 post offices and 9,578 sub-offices were in place around

11880-434: Was only after much lobbying that a 'cross-post' between Bristol and Exeter was authorised, in 1698; previously mail between the two cities had to be sent via London). In 1720 Bath postmaster Ralph Allen , who had a vision for improving the situation, took over responsibility for the cross-posts (i.e. routes connecting one post road to another) and bye-posts (connecting to places off the main post roads). He greatly expanded

11990-435: Was renamed ' Royal Mail Group plc' in 2002. In 2012 the counters business (known as ' Post Office Limited ' since 2002) was taken out of Royal Mail Group, prior to the latter's privatisation in 2013. The privatised holding company (Royal Mail plc) was renamed International Distributions Services plc in 2022. In the medieval period, nobles generally employed messengers to deliver letters and other items on their behalf. In

12100-548: Was slightly damaged by a German bomb in 1917 and in 1940, was set alight during the London Blitz , destroying much of the interior. It reopened in 1943. By the 1950s, the volume of telegraph traffic had declined and the Telegraph Office closed in 1963. In 1984 the new British Telecom Centre was opened on the site. The Post Office commenced its telephone business in 1878, however the vast majority of telephones were initially connected to independently run networks. In December 1880,

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