Hello ladies! Where are you off to in such an aesthetically pleasing automobile? An audition for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang perhaps! Not on your nelly! These petrol heads in their lavishly decorated Fiat are preparing for Monmouth’s Carnival procession. The date is June 25 and the year is 1931. The ‘flapper’ craze of the previous decade was in its death throes but the ladies in the car certainly look like they’re off to some Jazz Age-style party as they make their way down Chippenhamgate Street. Dorothy Evans is driving and the other occupants include Nini Call and Muriel Farthing. (Pic supplied )

Some institutions and buildings become such an integral part of the geographical area where they are based it’s easy to forget they haven’t always been here. Think the White House and Washington DC, Big Ben and Westminster, the Eiffel Tower, and Paris, and then take an almighty leap of the imagination and think Pen-y-Fal and Abergavenny. Originally known as the Joint Counties Lunatic Asylum, and later the Monmouthshire Mental Hospital, the sprawling Tudor Gothic-style building which overlooked and cast a shadow over the Gateway to Wales for well over a century was erected in 1851. Pen-y-Fal finally closed its doors for the last time on August 17, 1996, but here’s a picture of the men who helped build it. (Pic supplied )

All aboard! Quickly! On the train before it runs out of steam. There's nothing like the sight and sound of one of these bad boys as they hurtle down the tracks into a station called memory lane. We're not sure when this picture was taken because Ross-On-Wye no longer has a train station to call its own, nor for that matter does Monmouth. The passenger service was closed in 1959 and the line was left to the slow march of vegetation and neglect in 1964. Ledbury is now the nearest train station. But for posterity's sake let's remember a time when Ross was alive with the sound of rolling thunder and a platform to call its own. (Pic supplied )