Agincourt House

Agincourt House stands in Monmouth’s Agincourt Square, a half-timbered building from the early seventeenth century. Its gable bargeboard bears the date 1624 and the initials of William Roberts, whose grandson later rebuilt Drybridge House. John V. Hiling, in The Architecture of Wales, calls it one of the town’s two notable Tudor buildings and points to its two-storey oriel window. The house is Grade II* listed and appears on the Monmouth Heritage Trail among 24 historic buildings. A house already stood on the site in 1610, when John Speed mapped Monmouth’s streets. The present shop front dates from the late nineteenth century, though the street layout has remained unchanged since the 1600s. The building served as an ironmongers from about 1830 until the end of the nineteenth century. Josiah Coates ran the shop in 1830, combining ironmongery with blacksmithing, brazing, and tinplate work. From the early 1860s to 1883 his son Joseph took over, advertising himself as furnishing ironmonger, blacksmith, nailmaker, locksmith, and bellhanger. Joseph also sang in the choir and served as churchwarden at St Mary’s Priory Church. William Honeyfield followed in 1884, becoming mayor from 1891 to 1895 and a mason and bellringer at the same church. A plaque in the bell tower records his part in a ten-part peal on 1 July 1896. Today the ground floor is a clothes shop, while the upper floors house offices. The mosaic floor at the entrance still shows the name Cash & Co., left by the boot and shoe makers who occupied the shop in the early 1920s. A butcher’s called Le Gourmet traded here in the 1980s after the shoe shop closed. After the butchers moved out, the building was restored and won an award from Monmouth Civic Society in 1991. Between 1992 and 2010 it housed an antiques shop before becoming the clothes shop seen today.