Gilwern is quite a large village approximately five miles (8.5km) west of Abergavenny, just off the A465 Heads of the Valleys road. It is likely that the name was formed by combining the words ‘Cil’ (meaning retreat, recess, or corner) and ‘gwern’ (meaning place where alders grow or swamp).

The first edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps, published in 1888, shows that the village was centred around the point where the Brecon and Newport canal crossed over the river Clydach, marked as a waterfall on the map. Gilwern also had a station (located a little to the south of the village centre) on the Merthyr, Tredegar and Abergavenny branch of the London and North Western Railway. The village had a post office and two schools, one on the eastern side and one a little way north of the main nucleus of the village. There were four public houses: Lion Inn, Navigation Inn, Railway Inn and one which was unnamed but marked ‘P.H.’ The residents of Gilwern could chose between four places of worship: a Primitive Methodist Chapel; a Welsh Independent Chapel, a Wesleyan Methodist Chapel and Hope Baptist Chapel.

The 1922 edition of the six-inch Ordnance Survey map shows that there was a Mission Room in roughly the same location as where the school to the north of the village formerly stood. Gilwern had acquired a fifth public house – the Corn Exchange, and a fifth chapel. In the centre of the village a ‘clock works’ was recorded. The school and the post office on the eastern side of the centre of Gilwern remained open. Little had changed by the time the 1953 edition of the map was published.

Google street view seems to indicate that the unnamed public house featured in the 1888 Ordnance Survey map was in fact the Beaufort Arms, which remains open into the twenty first century. Other public houses in Gilwern in the twenty first century include the Towpath Inn and the Corn Exchange. The number of houses in Gilwern has increased dramatically since the mid-twentieth century, and the village has several amenities including convenience stores, a pharmacy, a butchers, a fish and chip shop and a hairdresser. There is still a post office and a school, although the school has moved north from its original location. It educates approximately 180 pupils aged four to eleven. Google street view images captured in June 2019 indicate that Gilwern United Reform Church and Hope Baptist chapel remain open as places of worship, although the Primitive Methodist Chapel was disused by 2001 and the Wesleyan Methodist Chapel was in use as a hairdressing salon in 2015.

Sources: historic Ordnance Survey maps; Google street view; Estyn report published January 2014

M. Ryder, RCAHMW, 4th January 2021