The focus for 18th century visitors was the Wye Gorge, accessed by drifting downstream from Ross-on-Wye. For artists, the big change was Rev William Gilpin’s trip from Ross to Chepstow of 1770, with his Observations on the River Wye of 1782. Gilpin invented an art style, ‘the Picturesque’.

Gilpin, and his followers, did not seek photographic accuracy in a landscape if it spoiled the effect. Ordinary hills were stretched into mountains and buildings embellished.

Downstream of Ross, in heavy rain, Gilpin saw the grand view of Goodrich Castle and then: “The view at Ruardean Church…is a scene of great grandeur. Here both sides of the river are steep, and both woody… The deep umbrage of the Forest of Dean occupies the front; and the spire of the church rises among the trees…”

After a night at Monmouth, Gilpin found Tintern Abbey was not ‘Picturesque’ enough. “A mallet judiciously used” on the gable ends would improve matters. Clergyman Gilpin did notice the encampment of beggar hovels and of one: “all she had to shew us, was her own miserable habitation… I never saw so loathsome a human dwelling…we were rather surprised that the wretched inhabitant was still alive.”

By 1828, Paterson’s Roads featured Wye Valley coach routes on turnpiked toll roads – and pushed Beachley as a health resort. Poet William Wordsworth walked along the Wye in 1793, meeting at Goodrich, the little girl of We are Seven.

Gilpin had put the Wye on the map, with artists making engravings for sale. JMW Turner was 17 when he visited Tintern in 1792, filling sketchbooks with pencil drawings, later to be made to order as water-colours.

In September 1804 the young but widely-travelled Francis Witts observed the precipitate mule-tracks carrying Dean coal to iron works. Witts approved of the “romantic pretty villages” such as at Redbrook, Whitebrook and ‘Bickswear’.

Meanwhile, Gilpin’s book was spreading. On 13 July 1810 Lewis Simond, a French-born American, complained about the tourists at Tintern:

“…each with his Gilpin or his Cambrian Guide in his hand, and each, no doubt, writing a journal. This is rather ridiculous and discouraging.”

William Cobbett’s 14 November 1821 Rural Ride took him from Weston-under-Penyard into the Dean.

“… here their cottages are very neat, and the people look hearty and well… Every cottage has a pig or two…some of these foresters keep cows, and all of them have bits of ground, cribbed, of course, at different times, from the forest…”

With a four-day turnround there might be a fleet of some 30 boats, each with a three- or four-man crew and up to six passengers. Maybe 6,000 passengers a season, all needing hospitality. The cost,

just for the boat, was typically four guineas, a bit over twice the road cost. Then came upstream traffic from Bristol.

Bristol Mirror Saturday 5 October 1822 wrote: “BRISTOL AND CHEPSTOW STEAM PACKET. THE new Steam Packet, DUKE OF BEAUFORT, will commence sailing on Monday NEXT…fitted up in a very commodious manner, with a separate Cabin for Ladies; and Passengers may rely upon receiving every attention.”

From Chepstow coaches could be hired. Day trippers now out-numbered the small boat tourists. By 1827, the coach supply had increased at least tenfold and there was a shortage of accommodation in Chepstow. By 1856, the steamer was bringing 700 trippers a time.

By the 1830s there was a new attraction for visitors to see.

Samuel Rush Meyrick, born in London in 1783, collected armour like his father, John He became an authority on European armour. Artists and stage designers, as well as architects, sought his advice.

Meyrick needed a castle of his own to display his burgeoning collection. In 1823, Samuel and his son, Llewellyn, visited the Wye Valley: “We have seen the very thing to suit us…Goodrich Castle on the Wye.”

The owners, however, the Griffins, took a dislike to Meyrick and were not minded to sell. Instead, Meyrick built his own castle on the next headland from Goodrich Castle, with the first sod cut in 1828. The last work completed, in 1837, was the still-surviving Gatehouse on the A40 dual carriageway.

The construction of Goodrich Court was far from universally popular Rev Fosbroke, with a direct view from his parish, grumbled:

“Meyrick’s castle is going on – very like something on the Rhine – a stumpy wooden spire is placed upon a fine tower, machicolated, and four corner spires – I hope the next lightning storm, will bring down the whole five thingamies.”

William Wordsworth wished: “…to blow away Sir Samuel Meyrick’s impertinent structure and all the possessions it contained.”

Goodrich Court was open for business, with a two-volume account printed. Meyrick had accomplished his aim of being the ‘first object’ on the Wye Tour.

In 1834 another collector, Francis Douce, left Meyrick a huge, unexpected collection, demanding a lot of space, and excluding the illustrated manuscript collection he actually coveted.

“Perhaps the richest portion of this highly interesting collection consists in the Carvings in ivory, which from their number, variety, and antiquity may be regarded as unique.”

Then in 1837 Meyrick’s ailing son Llewellyn died, aged 34.

In 1838 Louise Anne Twamley wrote An Autumn Ramble on the Wye. Born in Birmingham in 1812, Twamley was a published flower illustrator, a Chartist supporter and recorder of Australian history.

She describes crossing between Aust and Beachley in a “lumbering, cumbrous, unsymmetrical water monster” whose chimney was “short, stout, and marvellously tinkered with iron patches”. The deck was trampled with the “hoofs of all manner of beasts, chiefly of the unclean kind” and packed with farmers, drovers and butchers “hooting, calling, grumbling and swearing, in English and Welsh”.

Twamley noted that at Welsh Bicknor the limestone gave way to the red sandstone of Herefordshire and to the Dean forest coal-field on the other side and then:

“we hail the time-worn towers of Goodrich Castle…and beyond it, on the next knoll, stands the seat of Sir Samuel Rush Meyrick, Goodrich Court… Is it not a glorious scene?”.

Meyrick died in 1848 and was interred beside his son in Goodrich churchyard. He left most of his treasures to Augustus Meyrick, son of a cousin, in the “confident hope” that he would conserve the display. However, Augustus, a career soldier, had no use for his bequest and let his parents live in the Court.

In the 1850s and 1860s, Goodrich Court was still popular with visitors and had been significantly extended, with its own gasworks. Kerne Bridge Station on the Monmouth-Ross railway opened in 1873, within easy walking distance of Castle and Court. By the 1880s trainloads would come for the September Harvest Moons. In time, road vehicles took over, with the railways closing to passenger traffic in 1959.

On his parents’ death, Augustus sold the Court to George Moffatt, a wealthy businessman in 1871. For some years the collection was loaned to South Kensington Museum, subsequently the Victoria and Albert. The rest of the vast assemblage was dispersed to dealers internationally. By 1873, some £40,000-worth had been sold, with another £30,000 to come.

The Moffats remodelled the Court from a tourist museum to large family home. In 1949 the decision was taken to auction the fittings and knock down the building. Much of the historic carved woodwork was lost. The painstakingly carved stonework was sold by the ton. The grounds are now private woodland.

Meyrick’s fantasy castle, his armour collection and Douce’s medieval art are now almost forgotten. And Gilpin’s Wye Tour of aesthetes was replaced by ordinary tourists, now with their mobile phone cameras. Self-guided canoes, however, can still be hired on the increasingly polluted river.