Other buildings were attached to houses or constructed nearby. They include toilets, barns, animal shelters, and two pig cotes. A group of three kid pens has been found, confirming that goats were kept at Y Graig.
Several houses have small yards, gardens, or orchards next to them. In order to create these open areas it was often necessary to construct terraces, reinforced with retaining walls. In some places terraces were also built so that crops could be grown. Tracks ran past several houses, with stone walls on either side whose ruined remains can still be seen.
Four quarries have been found at Y Graig, from which the stone used in constructing the houses and other buildings would have been obtained. Close to the quarry at the north west end of the site are the well preserved ruins of a lime kiln. There was a brick kiln at the far south eastern end of the settlement.
Springs emerge from the ground at various points on the hillside. There were wells and probably small ponds.
Not much can be said with certainty about the history of the settlement. I will summarise the information available to me about the way of life of the people living there and I will offer a theory about the main cause of its abandonment. I will make use of two documents, an essay published in 1933 and the agreement of 1842 to impose rent charges in lieu of tithes.
In 1933 Katherine Goddard Jones entered and won a competition for the best history of any parish in Monmouthshire where there was a branch of the Women’s Institute. Her essay had the title History of Llanwenarth Citra, Llanwenarth being the parish that contained Y Graig, and Llanwenarth Citra that part of it that lay to the north of the River Usk. The essay includes a section “Of the Inhabitants of the Graig, between 60 and 70 years ago”.
According to K G Jones land at Y Graig was given to the poor of the parish by “a Lady who was a benefactress”. The people kept goats and made use of donkeys, and they grew figs and vines. On market days the donkeys could be seen carrying panniers laden with grapes and figs to the market in Abergavenny. Donkeys would also be used to carry supplies up the hill to the settlement. Coal, for example, would be deposited in sacks at the bottom of the hill and taken up by the donkeys. Residents also made money from the sale of goats’ milk, at that time believed to have special health giving properties.
One resident, possibly recalled directly by K G Jones, went by the name of Long Sall. Long Sall was a good looking woman, and so tall that her feet nearly touched the ground when she came into Abergavenny on a donkey.
K G Jones reports that there was conflict between the landowners and the residents over rent. Some of the information in her essay, for example her assertions about the amount of rent due, is almost certainly mistaken, but there is a ring of truth about her description of the methods used to force the inhabitants to pay rent and to evict them. She reports that two or three hundred goats and donkeys were rounded up by “the Authorities”, driven to Abergavenny, and then sold. She states that when one woman refused to pay any rent the roof was taken off her house.
