Blaenau Gwent is a county borough and parliamentary constituency in South Wales UK. It borders the administrative areas of Monmouthshire and Torfaen to the east, Caerphilly to the west and Powys to the north. Its main towns are Abertillery, Brynmawr, Ebbw Vale and Tredegar.
Gwent is the area of south-easternmost Wales, in the Welsh Marches. It is traditionally bounded on the east by the River Wye, the border between England and Wales, and on the south by the Severn Estuary.
The area has been occupied since the Paleolithic, with Mesolithic finds at Goldcliff and a famous Roman site at Caerleon.
The mediæval British kingdom of Gwent was the area between the rivers Usk and Wye, and took a name that literally means 'place', or 'the place'. It came into existence after the Romans had left Britain and survived in various forms until the Norman invasion of the west in 1067-91 AD. The Normans partitioned the area into the lordships of Abergavenny, Monmouth, Striguil (Chepstow) and Usk.
The lordships were the basic units of administration for the next 450 or so years, until Henry VIII passed the Laws in Wales Act 1535. This Act abolished the marcher lordships and established the county of Monmouthshire out of them — combining the lordships of Newport (Gwynllwg) and Caerleon east of the river Usk and Abergavenny, Monmouth, Usk and Chepstow to the west of it.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, writers began using the name "Gwent" in a romantic literary way to describe Monmouthshire, and in the local government re-organisations of 1974/5, many new administrative areas in Britain were named after mediæval kingdoms — such as Cumbria, Strathclyde and "Gwent".
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