Cusop | |
Cusop
Cusop shown within Herefordshire |
|
Population | 300 (approx.) |
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OS grid reference | SO239415 |
Unitary authority | Herefordshire |
Ceremonial county | Herefordshire |
Region | West Midlands |
Country | England |
Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
Post town | HEREFORD |
Postcode district | HR3 |
Dialling code | 01497 |
Police | West Mercia |
Fire | Hereford and Worcester |
Ambulance | West Midlands |
EU Parliament | West Midlands |
UK Parliament | Hereford and South Herefordshire |
List of places: UK • England • Herefordshire |
Cusop is a village and civil parish in Herefordshire, England that lies next to the town of Hay-on-Wye in Wales. It is reached by driving out of Hay towards Bredwardine, and turning right into Cusop Dingle.
The writer L.T.C. Rolt lived here between 1914 and 1922, in a house then known as Radnor View, in a development locally called "Thirty Acres". Spending his early boyhood here, he went on to co-found the Inland Waterways Association and the Talyllyn Railway Preservation Society, and to write many books on transport, engineering biography and industrial archaeology.
The village is recorded in Domesday Book as "Cheweshope".[1]
The Manor of Cusop formed part of the Ewyas Lacy Hundred and was once owned by the Clanowe Family, Edward III, Henry ap Griffith, Vaughans of Moccas and the Cornewall Family, lastly George Cornewall.[2]
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There are two castles associated with the village. Cusop Castle and Mouse Castle, or Llygad.[3]
Cusop Castle is 200 yards from the church, formerly a fortified residence.[3][4]
Mouse Castle is an unfinished motte-and-bailey earthwork,[4] consisting of a rock boss with an artificially scarped vertical side.[5] The castle was held by the de Clanowe family in the 14th century.[2]
Cusop Dingle is a wooded valley near the village. It is notable in entomological history as the place where the species Platypeza hirticeps was discovered in 1899.[6][7]
In the Dingle is a single track road, locally known as 'Millionaire's Row', because of the large, Victorian houses which line the route up to Offa's Dyke Path, one of the popular walking tracks in the West of England. It runs alongside the Dulas Brook (forming the border between Wales and England) into the foothills of the Black Mountains. With a multitude of waterfalls, the Dulas Brook is home to trout, otter and kingfishers.
Cusop Dingle was home to the poisoner Herbert Rowse Armstrong, the only English solicitor ever hanged for murder, and the grave of his wife Katharine is in the parish churchyard. His former home, originally Mayfield but now The Mantles, was owned by Martin Beales, a solicitor working in Armstrong's old office in Hay. Beales believed that Armstrong was innocent and published a book arguing his case.[8][9]
Media related to [//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Cusop Cusop] at Wikimedia Commons