LINDA Vista Gardens and Raglan Castle are the places most visitors to our fair county want to be, according to new research by web experts who specialise in such things.
Monmouthshire's attractions were ranked by their Google reviews, and
It’s good news for Raglan Castle: with an average of 4.74 stars from 4,416 reviews, it’s the county’s best-rated visitor attraction.
Yet the big surprise is that Abergavenny’s Linda Vista Gardens comes in a close second, beating heavyweights such as Tintern Abbey.
Grosmont Castle came in third. Chepstow Castle was fourth and Raglan Farm Park was fifth.
Although Tintern Abbey had the most reviews, it lies in a lowly eighth place.
Oliver Weston, founder of seobacklinks.com, said, "What stands out to me is that Linda Vista Gardens has far fewer reviews than the leading castles, yet it comes second overall. The top five cover ruined castles, a peaceful garden and a family farm, which shows the range of places visitors value in Monmouthshire. Tintern Abbey is the most-reviewed attraction by some distance and still sits comfortably in the top half. Wherever you are thinking of going, I would read the latest reviews first to see what recent visitors say."
Nestled between Tudor Street and Castle Meadows, Linda Vista Gardens is a little patch of calm and landscaped gardening for a soul to lose themselves in.
Translated from the Spanish tongue as ‘beautiful view’, it's not hard to see why.
Amidst the brooding backdrop of the imperial Blorenge, there’s a wealth of orchids, shrubs, and unusual specimen trees for those with a passing interest in botany to meander gaily through. And of course, there's the iconic house which has an interesting backstory.
Rewind the clock to the 19th century, and Abergavenny was a somewhat unsavoury place in which to dwell. Appalling sanitary conditions meant that clean water was a luxury and the air was often foul.
A report from 1847 described parts of Tudor Street as “indescribably filthy and almost unapproachable from the stench.”
Into this cesspit and cauldron of poverty, the Jenkins brothers were born. William, John, and Henry were not happy with the lot fate had drawn for them, and so left their humble abode in Chicken Street (now Flannel Street) to find their fortune in Chile.
Having made his fortune, Henry, his wife Mary, and their six children returned to dear old Abergavenny and had a big manor built overlooking the River Usk and shielded from the none-too-salubrious quarter of Tudor Street by a wall of fine foliage.
Completed in 1875, Henry’s new house was named Linda Vista, but he never really got to appreciate that ‘beautiful view’ all that much because two years later he died.
His legacy certainly lives on though.
Henry was not alone in leaving a lasting footprint on the face of Abergavenny. His brother William, who died in 1893, aged 74. after retiring to The Willows in Pen-y-Pound, owned much of the land that we now know as Avenue Road. He also donated the plot for a girls’ school to be built on Harold Road, which, after numerous changes through the years, we now know as Cantref Primary.
It’s certainly an eye-opener to find out just how much of Abergavenny was built with Chilean coin.
Comments
We've recently changed our login process. If you have an account for commenting, you will need to re-register on the login window.
This article has no comments yet. Be the first to leave a comment.