Pontnewydd Cascades
There was a flight of three locks on the Monmouthshire Canal at the western end of Commercial Street.
The derelict canal had become an eyesore when the Pontnewydd Cascades were created in place of the top two locks. The newly completed landscaping is shown in the top photo.
The pond in the picture is the remaining fragment of a large balancing pond, which was between the middle and bottom lock. This ensured that the section of canal between the locks didn’t flood when the middle lock was emptied and didn’t experience a sudden drop in level when the lower lock was filled with water. There were also weirs for management of canal water.
The middle photo shows the view down the flight of locks from the top lock, possibly in the 1950s. There was a narrow balancing pond on the right, overgrown in the photo. On the left is the Old Bridge End Inn, which then marked the end of Commercial Street.
There was a narrow canal bridge in front of the inn, shown in the bottom photo. To get from Commercial Street to Mount Pleasant Road, people and vehicles had to loop southwards past the inn, over the canal bridge and past the edge of the large balancing pond – this was approximately the route now taken by Tŷ Box Close. A direct, and wider, road was created by extending Commercial Street across the filled-in bottom lock.
Tŷ Box Farm (also known as Box Farm) was south of the bridge, west of the canal.
With thanks to the archive of the Monmouthshire, Brecon and Abergavenny Canals Trust for the images
Postcode: NP44 1AE View Location Map
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