Kenchester, Herefordshire - Extract from National Gazetteer, 1868

"KENCHESTER, a parish in the hundred of Grimsworth, county Hereford, 5 miles N.W. of Hereford, its post town, and 15 from Hay. It is situated between Credenhill and the river Wye. The village is very small, consisting of a few scattered houses. Here are the ruins of Magna Castra, the Ariconium of Camden, the walls of which are still to be traced.

It formerly covered an area of 50 acres, with a temple at the eastern end, and a niche of Roman bricks called the "Chair". At the close of the last century a stone altar was dug up from the foundation of the northern wall, bearing an inscription to the Emperor Cæsar Marcus Aurelius, and at different periods large vaults, a hypocaust, with the leaden pipes entire, tesselated pavements, a mosaic floor, fragments of pottery and urns, with large bones, have been discovered.

The living is a rectory in the diocese of Hereford, value £182. The church, dedicated to St. Michael, is an ancient structure. There is a Sunday-school, also an institution endowed by the late Lady Southampton with a chapel and two schoolrooms, for the education of both sexes on the British system."

[Description(s) from The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland (1868)
Transcribed by Colin Hinson ©2003]