Brockweir is a village in Hewelsfield and Brockweir civil parish, in the Forest of Dean District of Gloucestershire, England. The civil parish also includes the separate village of Hewelsfield.
The village is located on the eastern bank of the River Wye. A road bridge links it across the river to Monmouthshire, Wales, about a mile (1.6 km) outside the village of Tintern and north of Chepstow. The village is close to both the Offa's Dyke Path and the Wye Valley Walk.
History
Brockweir is first attested in an annotation on the now lost place-name Pull Brochuail (Welsh pwll ‘pool, lake, pit’ + Welsh personal name Brochfael) in the Book of Llandaff, in a charter dated to c. 620. All later spellings of Brockweir, however, suggest the present place-name is derived from Old English brōc ‘brook’ + wer. Brockweir is located where a small brook meets the Wye; however, there remains the possibility that the first element might be a shortened form of the personal name Brochfael.
Brockweir has been an important crossing point of the River Wye throughout history, and is approached by a reputedly ancient cross-peninsular trackway. The weir from which the village gets its name is first documented as a gift to Monmouth Priory from Baderon, Lord of Tintern in c 1120; it was held by Tintern Abbey in 1331. The remains of the weir can be seen as shallows under Brockweir bridge. This was obviously a lucrative weir which, coupled with the river crossing, would have made Brockweir an important location; settlement probably sprang up there at an early date.
The village existed from at least the 13th century, as a hamlet within the parish of Hewelsfield. The oldest existing building, the Malthouse, dates in part from the 15th century and probably formed part of a grange owned by Tintern Abbey. Another house, the Manor House, dates from about 1600, and many other houses date from the 18th century.
For centuries many inhabitants of Brockweir were employed in the trade of the river Wye. Among them was John Gethin, who left two boats to his sons in 1571 (one of his sons was probably the John Gethin who was killed on his boat in the Bristol Channel, during an affray with Bristol merchants in 1587). Brockweir was the highest point reached by a normal tide on the Wye, and a key transhipment point where the cargoes of sea-going ships of up to 90 tonnes were transferred onto barges to be sent upstream, and the products of Herefordshire, Monmouthshire and the Forest of Dean (principally iron and timber) were sent back to Bristol and beyond.
Brockweir, approached as much by water as by road, was an isolated community with an independent character. The minister appointed to its new Moravian church in 1832 (see below) described the life of its watermen as being centred on beerhouses, skittle alleys, and cockfighting and said that it had the reputation of a 'city of refuge' for lawless elements. Only one narrow road led into the village, and goods were usually carried by donkeys or by water, with a ferry taking travellers to and from the Welsh bank of the Wye.
Several chapels, a school, the decline of its trade, and an influx of outsiders to the area gradually changed the character of the village. During the early 20th century several Nonconformist groups, including Quakers, Pentecostalists, and Christian Scientists, held meetings in Brockweir and the surrounding area. The Grade II listed lattice girder road bridge, linking Brockweir to the main Chepstow to Monmouth road (now the A466), was built in Chepstow by Edward Finch & Co., and was opened in 1906. La Belle Marie, a wood twin-screw steam boat of 31 tons, was bought by James Dibden of Brockweir in about 1905 and ran on the Wye as a market boat until the First World War. She was then laid up and dismantled; a few remains of the boat were still visible near Brockweir bridge as late as 1934. In 1929 Brockweir Halt was opened on the Wye Valley Railway on the Monmouthshire side of the bridge. The halt closed in 1959.