Caerwent - <>

Caerwent is a village and community in Monmouthshire, Wales. It is located about five miles west of Chepstow and eleven miles east of Newport. It was founded by the Romans as the market town of Venta Silurum, an important settlement of the Brythonic Silures tribe. The modern village is built around the Roman ruins, which are some of the best-preserved in Europe. It remained prominent through the Roman era and Early Middle Ages as the site of a road crossing between several important civic centres.HistoryRoman timesIt was founded by the Romans in AD 75 as Venta Silurum, a market town for the defeated Silures tribe. This is confirmed by inscriptions on the "Civitas Silurum" stone, now on display in the parish church. Large sections of the Roman town walls are still in place, rising up to 5 metres high in places. Historian John Newman has described the walls as "easily the most impressive town defence to survive from Roman Britain, and in its freedom from later rebuilding one of the most perfectly preserved in Northern Europe." In 1881, a portion of a highly intricate coloured floor mosaic or tessellated pavement, depicting different types of fish, was unearthed during excavations in the garden of a cottage.

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