St Briavels, located where the Wye Valley meets the Forest of Dean, at National Grid Reference SO 558 046 is a short (approximately 16 miles) drive from Ross. Its main features are its castle and the church of St Mary the Virgin. Now a Youth Hostel, the oldest surviving part of St. Briavels Castle was built for King John between the years of 1209 to 1211. In 1292/3, Edward 1st rebuilt the gatehouse to help protect the building from Welsh attack.

The top six of the photographs below were taken in June 2002 and of the bottom two, the one of the castle to the left was taken in 1973 and the gatehouse to the right in 2001. If seen full size, the 1973 photograph, scanned from an old Kodak Pocket Instamatic negative taken during a visit during my youth when I stayed in the castle, has a sign post which shows Ross as being six and a half miles distant. This is wrong, unless the village of St. Briavels has been moved at some point in time.