USK CIVIC SOCIETY(FOUNDED 1973)

 Welcome to the web pages of Usk Civic Society.  For quick navigation around our pages, click on the buttons below.

Our Aims: 

To promote high standards of planning, architecture and design; to educate the public in the history, geography and conservation of the natural and built environment in Usk and surrounding parishes not covered by other Civic Societies.

What we do: 

We take an active and positive interest in planning policies and proposals and proposed developments in our area by:

• Responding to consultations on draft development plans published by the Local Planning Authority (Monmouthshire County Council);

• Scrutinising all planning applications and development proposals, submitting observations and objections to the relevant public body, statutory undertaking and others; we appear at public inquiries to express our views;

• Responding to consultations or documents prepared by the Welsh Assembly Government by submitting views on them. Recent examples are the consultations on draft documents:       "Protection of Historic Assets”; “Review of Historic Environment in Wales”

• We promote good design and environmental improvement through annual Awards for Environmental Improvement, which were re-introduced in 2003 with a newly designed framed certificate.

• We contribute towards Usk in Bloom by financial support and by awards in the category ”Best House Front without a Garden”. 

• We promote interest in, and concern for, the history, geography and civic pride of Usk by arranging a series of lectures in the autumn and winter months (held on the second Wednesday of each month at the British Legion Club in Usk).

• We hold social events – a Summer Party and a Christmas Party at which the Environmental Improvement Awards are presented by our President, the Lord Raglan.  Details of social events appear in our Events Diary. 

• We attend Usk Show each September with an exhibition to broadcast and promote our activities and interests.

Sunday 21 September 2008, 10.30 – 3.45
ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE DAY.  In celebration of the announcement 150 years ago, by Wallace and Darwin, of Evolution by Natural Selection, The Sessions House. Usk, Monmouthshire.

• Exhibition: Fred Langford Edwards’ photographs of Wallace specimens, including some from British collections not open to the public.

• Fred Langford Edwards on the research he is undertaking on Wallace, in Britain, Brazil and Borneo with the support of a Wellcome Trust Award.

• Earl of Cranbrook on Wallace’s scientific work in Borneo.

• Mr.Rambli Ahmad, on the Wallace trail in Sarawak, Malaysia  (To be confirmed.)

• Professor David Collard on the later Wallace as an economic and social reformer. 

• The launch by Seren of Anne Cluysenaar’s illustrated poem-sequence Batu-Angas: Envisioning Nature with Alfred Russel Wallace (Seren), followed by a short reading. Anne will be available to sign copies.
  
  Alfred Russel Wallace (1823 – 1913) was at one time just about the most famous scientist in the world and is still much admired by working entomologists and ornithologists. Born at Llanbadoc, just across the bridge from Usk, he began taking an intense interest in plants and wildlife while working in Wales as a young man. He went on to collect and send back to Britain from Amazonia and what was then called the Malay Archipelago an extraordinary number and range of specimens.  Having noticed variations between members of the same species, and studied their geographical distribution, Wallace suddenly realised how natural selection comes about. He wrote to Darwin, outlining his theory, and on July 1, 1858 the theories of Wallace and Darwin were presented at the Linneaan Society. The rest is history – a history still vigorously debated today.
  
  Excursion: At the end of the day, and if the weather is fair, participants will visit the recently-erected Memorial near Wallace’s birthplace just over the river from Usk town.
   
  All events and coffee on arrival: £5
  All events, coffee on arrival, lunch and wine/ coffee/soft drink, £11.
  To book please contact
  Anne Cluysenaar at anne.cluysenaar@googlemail.com  or Stella Collard at stellacollard@yahoo.co.uk  

A G (Geoff) Mein (1922 to 2008) 

Small towns and villages often have people who are well known as ‘characters’ in their later years, regarded sometimes grudgingly, occasionally affectionately. Usk has recently lost one of its own. It is with great sadness that the Society reports the death of AG (Geoff) Mein at his home in Old Market Street on the morning of Friday 15^th February 2008.

Geoff was one of the longest serving members of the Society from almost its foundation in 1973. On retiring as Solicitor to the National Coal Board in South Wales, he took an active role in Society matters for over thirty years, serving as Secretary, subsequently as Chairman and latterly as Lecture Secretary. His knowledge and recall of events was second to none and his guidance and advice well argued even if not always accepted by his colleague Committee members.

For many years in the 1980s and 1990s he and his wife Pat were a formidable force and were successful in leading and influencing the opposition to some of the least acceptable building proposals in Usk. Perhaps chief among these was the proposed tower block on land near Usk Bridge which went to public enquiry. With the help of a planning consultant, they convinced the Planning Inspector that it should be refused. The site was subsequently and successfully developed as Usk Bridge Mews.

Geoff brought to the Society his considerable intellect as well as a long memory; and a lawyer’s rationale and logic. These he applied to his two favourite subjects, history and archaeology especially of the Usk area. He contributed articles to several learned journals but outstanding in his writing of history is his Norman Usk, now sadly out of print. It is a testimony to his facility for research into documents of the period, relating their content to the archaeological discoveries that he and others had made.

Shortly before his death he had finished the chapters he has contributed to the book on the history of Usk that is expected to be published this autumn.

In recent years his archaeological enthusiasm concentrated on the dig at Trostrey, near the church, where he and his fellow diggers revealed the evidence of human occupation and activity from the Mesolithic period to the Middle Ages. His delight in giving talks on this subject was boundless.

He was much in demand for his illustrated talks on the buildings of Usk and claimed to have visited almost all that have some historical significance.  He produced the Usk Town Trail for the Society and was looking forward to revising it from his recent discoveries about some of Usk’s buildings as well as removing some of the printing errors that somehow had crept in. Fortunately he left the new draft sufficiently clear for a revised edition to be printed in due course- typical of his conscientious attitude to all his endeavours.

The Priory Church of St. Mary in Usk was almost full for the service in his memory on 1^st March, a tribute to the respect and affection in which he was held. A private interment at Trostrey Church followed, appropriately near his late wife Patricia and alongside the location of the archaeological site where they had both spent many happy hours.

The Society hopes that memory of Geoff and Pat will be sustained by the installation of a seat on the bank of the River Usk, with a plaque recording their contribution to the Society’s activities and to the life of Usk.

He will be greatly missed.

Current projects and campaigns.

• The Society published in March 2004 the “Usk Town Trail” with the aid of a grant from Monmouthshire County Council. Prepared by local historian, archaeologist and former Society chairman Mr Geoff Mein, and with the layout designed by Ms Angela Bowyer, the 32-page booklet provides an outline of Usk’s history and a guide to some of its interesting buildings. It is illustrated by drawings of some of the town’s notable buildings and contains a map of a route around the town from which the buildings can be enjoyed. The booklet (price £3) is on sale at: Usk Rural Life Museum (New Market Street), H&R Paint Centre and Lindwall’s Newsagents (both in Bridge Street).

• Complementing the “Usk Town Trail”, the society has devised a scheme for the installation of “blue plaques” (in English and Welsh) on many of the buildings or sites of historic interest described in the booklet. The Town Trail is supplemented by a leaflet, the 'Plaque Trail' describing where the plaques are.  With the support and help of a working party including the Rural Life Museum, Town Council and the Vale of Usk Tourist Association, we made a submission in June 2004 to the Monmouthshire County Council and thence to the Welsh Assembly Government for 80% of the funds for their manufacture and installation in 2005 and 2006 (see our newsletter for details of progress with this). By the end of July 2006 we will have installed 28 plaques at, for example:

  • Usk Prison (designed by Thomas Henry Wyatt (1807-1880)), built in 1841 on the model of Pentonville;

  • The Sessions House of 1874, also by Wyatt;

  • the location of the Battle of Pwll Melin in 1405;

  • the location of the mediaeval leper hospital until 1403;

  • the two gaols before the prison was built.
     

•  Included in the blue plaque project is a scheme to install plaques in some of Usk’s pavements to mark the location of some of the town gates (now demolished) and the line of the walls of the first and second forts built by the Romans.

These will feature in our Events Bulletin, which includes our programme of talks and lectures in the Autumn and Winter (2007-8).

Membership of the Society is open to all. Individual membership is £6 a year; dual membership £10. As a member you will receive the annual newsletter and programme, can come to the autumn/winter talks and will be invited to the summer and Christmas parties. You can help stage the annual exhibition in the Society’s tent at the Usk Agricultural Show. You can raise with the Committee your planning and environmental concerns.

Many members avail themselves of the arrangement for payment by direct debit. For the names and addresses of the Treasurer and Membership Secretary click here.

For the Society’s 2007 Newsletter, click here.

The Society is affiliated to the Civic Trust for Wales, with which it keeps in regular contact through attendance at conferences, bulletins and by contributing to the Trust’s own newsletter.

The Officers of the Society for 2007-8

Kath Collis Chairman Tel: 01291 672774

John Barrow Secretary Tel: 01291 673623

Rita Edwards Treasurer; 27 New Market Street, Usk, Monmouthshire NP15 1AU  Tel:01291 672672

Stella Collard Membership Secretary; Penywrwlod, Llantrisant, Usk.  01291 673655

Membership inquiries and application forms are available from Stella Collard (above), to whom they should be returned.