I'm still writing the Christmas story, now titled A Golden Age.
It begins in the Murenger pub in High Street. This is interesting:
"There is also the present public house called the Murenger House, at
53 High Street. It has been claimed by tradition that it belonged to
the Murenger (an official responsible for town walls and for collecting
money for their maintenance in the Middle Ages). In fact the Murenger
House has a mainly modern timber framed frontage, with three upper
stories under the gable. The first floor front room has a plasterwork
ceiling decorated with a Tudor roses and floral pinecone finials. It
appears to be Tudor, or, according to John Newman, early 17th century
in date,
and therefore after any town wall would have been in use. However the
thickness of the side and rear wall may indicate these were built of
stone, and they could be considerably older than the frontage .The
building is only referred to in local directories as ‘The Murenger
House’ after 1880.
There are earlier references to another Murenger
House, with a shield and arms carved over the front door. In 1801
William Coxe refers to the Murenger’s House as being ‘an old spacious
building, with an ornamented front, and a coat of arms, carved in
stone, over the door’, and it appears this building was demolished in
1816. It stood on the corner of High Street and the modern Bridge
Street, on the site now occupied by the NatWest Bank. In 1750 it was
referred to as ‘The Great House’ and in 1553 was the house of George ap
Morgan and was described as ‘the strongest place in all the town’"
- http://www.newportpast.com/early/wall/index.htm
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