LIKE people, buildings evolve and adapt to new designs and new purposes.Times change and nothing is permanent. The Abergavenny you know is not the Abergavenny someone alive 500 years ago would recognise. Yet there are always clues and indications of what went before.

Much of the architecture of Abergavenny was not designed for its current use.

Take Pen-y-val for example.

Originally known as the Joint Counties Lunatic Asylum, and later the Monmouthshire Mental Hospital, the sprawling Tudor Gothic style institution which overlooked and cast a shadow over Abergavenny for well over a century was erected in 1851.

"Gone to Abergavenny" used to be a metaphor in the South Wales valleys for going insane.

Pen-y-Fal finally closed its doors for the last time on August 17, 1996, and a large part of the original building still stands as part of a sprawling housing development which is riddled with an abundance of clues and pointers as to the former legacy of the site. Not least the innocuous and pleasant grassy verge where today children play and dogs walk, and beneath which, three thousand poor souls are buried in unmarked graves.

In the place where cattle were brought, sold, and slaughtered, we now have a Morrisons.

Wetherspoons has taken over the building which was once the old Coliseum cinema.

The old Pavilion Cinema on Monk Street is now the Gateway Christian Centre, and the Art Shop in Market Street was originally Bethany Baptist Chapel which dates back to 1883 and would for a brief period become a Museum of Childhood.

The old convent in Pen-y-Pound became an Environmental Studies Centre, a hostel, and is now being sold as residential accommodation. As is the old Abergavenny Workhouse in Union Road.

The old King Henry VIII School building, also at Pen-y-Pound, now houses the Melville Theatre.

The Old Police Station on Baker Street is now flats. The Drill Hall and base for the 3rd Mons is now a cinema.

And to complete this little triangle of the town that is in constant flux the old library nearby will become a mosque.

The carved head on the right of the door of the library depicts the first Marquess of Abergavenny, William Nevill, who gave the old Nevill Hall manor house its name and lived there for a number of years.

The stone head on the left is Andrew Carnegie, once known as the richest man in the world. Unlike Lord Abergavenny, Carnegie wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He was born dirt poor to a family who lived in one room of a rundown shack in Dunfermline, Scotland.

He made his billions in America and by the time of his death in 1919, Carnegie had given away $5 billion in today’s money.

He gave to universities, he gave to museums, he gave to initiatives which supported science, the arts, and world peace, and libraries.

Libraries exactly like the one in Abergavenny.

Now, after years of standing empty and gathering dust, the old library will have a new purpose in a town that proudly carries its history but is always mindful to keep one arm free so it can embrace its future.