Chepstow Museum

Chepstow Museum stands in a fine townhouse called Gwy House on Bridge Street, just beside the River Wye and opposite the castle. Built in 1796 for a wealthy apothecary, the building once served as a girls’ high school, a Red Cross hospital in the First World War, and later a district hospital. In 1982 it became the town museum and still keeps many of its original internal features. The museum is run by Monmouthshire Museums Service and sits at the heart of Chepstow in Monmouthshire, south-east Wales. The displays show how Chepstow grew from a medieval port into a busy Marches town in the Wye Valley, drawing poets and painters over the centuries. In 2010 an exhibition called ‘The Wye Tour and its Artists’ displayed period art from the famous Wye Tour, accompanied by a detailed catalogue. The collection includes nearly two hundred items linked to Chepstow held on Gathering the Jewels, the website of Welsh cultural history. Inside, visitors find rooms that still hold their original fittings from the building’s past uses. The displays trace the town’s history as a trading port and its place in the Wye Valley landscape. Paintings and artefacts bring to life the poets and artists who once visited the area. The museum offers a quiet look at Chepstow’s story in a setting that itself tells part of that tale.