Where is The Gaer?
The Gaer [multimap.co.uk] is an area in the North-West of Newport, a city in South Wales between Cardiff and the English border (the River Severn).
The word Gaer means 'fort', as (with a slight mutation) in the name of nearby Roman fortress town Caerleon. This name comes from an Iron Age (?) fortress which is sited to the west of the Gaer estate - the only reference I could find was on a CAMRA site
I hope to include on this page information about the local geography and places of interest: pubs, shops, geology, history, etc..
Also, did you know that the streets of one area of the Gaer are all named after famous writers (click a name to find out about the writer, text following the names is either a list of works, a quote from that writer or a factoid about them) -
- Shakespeare
- Dickens
- Henry Vollam Morton - wrote the newspaper article describing the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb
- Pepys
- Ben Johnson (not the Canadian athlete!)
- Bronte
- Shaw
- Hazlitt
- Keats - trained as an apothecary-surgeon and became a student at Guy's Hospital, London; however, one year later, he abandoned the profession of medicine for poetry.
- Herbert George Wells - wrote science fiction books "The Time Machine" (1895); "Dr Moreaus Island" (1896) - in which a mad scientist transforms animals into human creatures; "The Invisible Man" (1897) - about a scientist who has tampered with nature in pursuit of superhuman powers and "War of the Worlds" (1898) - about a Martian invasion. He wrote many other works including a book called "Mars" (1895) which speculates on life on the planet Mars.
- Robert (aka Rabbie)Burns - there is a controversy concerning a number (80) of works that may or may not have been written by Burns.
- Charles and Mary Lamb - wrote "Tales from Shakespeare", among other works; they were brother and sister their lives were dominated by acts of insanity. Mary Lamb in such a lapse of reason killed their mother and Charles was mentally deranged for some time 1795-6, leaving him in fear for his mind until his death in 1834.
- Richard Brinsley Sheridan
- Rudyard Kipling - was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. He wrote many different types of literature including the "Jungle Book" (1894) and "Just-so Stories" (1902); the majority of his work appears to have been about war, his most famous poem is probably "If".(
- Ruskin
Crescents:
Drives:
Ways:
Groves:
Closes:
Rises:
... Are amongst the names [if I've missed your street let me know]. Interstingly the people who named the streets appear to have created a hierarchy based on street length, such that Shakespeare (being the greatest writer?) has the longest street named for him - and the likes of Burns and Lamb (who's he?) having small closes names for them.
References: Britannica.com, Bibliomania and Google.co.uk were very useful when preparing this page.
