Who is it? Where is it? And what is it?

Those are the questions!

And like most questions, it leads to others.

On the face of it, and a face is all we have. It appears to be a man with green hair, sporting a giant caterpillar where his mouth should be.

However, looks can be deceiving.

The green hair is, in fact, a laurel leaf headpiece favoured by Julius Caesar and other Roman Emperors who wanted something to symbolise their divine triumph and honour. And the caterpillar is merely an out-of-control moustache favoured by Victorian gentlemen and hapless hipsters.

So the evidence points us in the direction of someone with a lot of money who had questionable fashion choices and a thing for Rome.

That really doesn’t narrow the playing field, but what does is the location where the head is perched like a mute sentry from a bygone age.

You’ll find him positioned in the porch of Linda Vista House, and so what does that tell us?

For answers, let’s rewind the clock to the 19th century, when Abergavenny, for many, was a somewhat unsavoury place in which to dwell.

Into this little cauldron of limited opportunity, poverty, and appalling sanitary conditions, 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.

Although the South American country may seem like a strange shore for a trio of young Welshmen to pursue their dreams, Chile at the time had strong links with the UK. In 1811, they declared independence from Spain, and their Navy was headed by Britain’s Admiral Cochrane.

The UK had strong business interests in Chile because of its wealth of mineral resources such as copper and sodium nitrate, which was used to make explosives and fertiliser.

Although the Jenkins brothers never became copper barons or nitrate kings, they turned a healthy buck through building warehouses for the exporters and houses for the workers.

Having made his fortune, Henry, his wife Mary, and their six children returned to dear old Abergavenny, where the lad from Chicken Street upped his game, splashed the cash, and moved into a plush residence in Brecon Road where he employed two live-in servants.

Whilst lording it in his new abode, old Henry had a much bigger 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 in the stone head that hangs and keeps a watchful eye over the gardens.

You’ve come a long way from a slum in Flannel Street lad!

Let's hope Henry likes the new paint job he was given during the house's current restoration.