CRASSWALL, CRASWELL, or CROSSWOLD, is a chapelry, township, and small village in the parish of Clodock, situated near the source of the river Monnow, at the foot of the Black mountains, which here form the boundary between Herefordshire and Brecknockshire. It is distant 7 miles S.E. of Hay, 16 N. of Abergavenny, 20 W. of Hereford, and about 8 N.W. of Pontrilas station on the Newport, Abergavenny, and Hereford branch of the Great Western railway (West Midland section); is in Ewyas Lacy hundred, Dore union and petty sessional division, Hay county court district, and Michaelchurch Eskley polling district. The population of the township in 1861 was 356; in 1871, 345; inhabited houses, 76; families or separate occupiers, 76; area, 3,848a. 1r. 3p.; annual rateable value, £2,051 10s. The Marquess of Abergavenny, who is lord of the manor of Ewyas Lacy, Penry Williams, Esq., and Miss Rawson are the principal landed proprietors.

The soil is sandy; subsoil, sandstone; chief produce, wheat, oats, barley, and roots. Crasswall forms a part of the parish of Clodock for ecclesiastical purposes only; for civil purposes it has its own officers, and maintains its own poor. It is in Hereford diocese and archdeaconry and Weobley rural deanery; living, a perpetual curacy; value, £65, including 25 acres of glebe; patron, the vicar of Clodock (Rev. Charles Proberts, of Bacton); incumbent, Rev. Charles Lionel Eagles, M.A., of Wadham College, Oxford, who was insti- tuted in 1852, and resides at Longtown vicarage. The register begins with the year 1703. The church is an ancient stone edifice, with nave, porch, and small belfry with one bell. It is in great need of restoration.

The township is included in the Longtown district school board. New school buildings, to accommodate 75 children, are about to be erected from the designs of Messrs. Haddon Brothers, of Hereford and Malvern. The Primitive Methodists have two chapels here. Among the Black mountains, near the rise of one of the branches of the Monnow, and between 1 and 2 miles from the borders of Brecknockshire, formerly stood a small priory dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and subordinate to the order of Grandmount, in Normandy. It contained a prior and ten monks, who were established here about the end of the reign of King John. At the suppression, its revenues amounted to 40s. yearly, which were granted by Edward IV. to Christ's College, Cambridge.