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Maritime and Industrial Heritage

A Maritime City

Local innovation, global connections

It was no great surprise to us when the Patent Office moved to Newport – after all we have always been innovative.  Today it’s all about digital applications, software engineering and hush-hush cyber-security, but in previous generations we pioneered silicon chips at Inmos and specialist steel-making in plants as big as towns.  The large tidal range here has meant we have attracted a variety of shipping up the Usk. We made our stone dock the largest in the world at the time and even now we can welcome bigger ships than Cardiff. A walk over the top of our ingenious Transporter Bridge 50m above the river Usk is a breathtaking challenge in a city of river crossings – 11 at the last count. Our historic links to the coal and iron-making Valleys and a World Heritage Site are revealed in the names of riverside wharves like Blaenavon. 

It was the Monmouthshire and Brecknock Canal (the Mon and Brec we call it) and its unique staircase of 14 locks which really kicked things off in the industrial revolution but we know there was plenty of trade going on for many centuries before. The Romans built our first port at Caerleon, and we have found a 15th century ocean-going ship preserved in our tidal mud which traded with Portugal and Spain –we call it the Newport Medieval Ship. We have others too, a Romano Celtic vessel (the most complete ever known) and  a Bronze Age one.

And it wasn’t all one way - our trading and making heritage brought people from across the globe to Newport too so that today’s city has a rare mix of cultures.

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