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IrrjjinUgta Camlimd! NEW SERIES, No. IV.—OCTOBER, 1850. CASTELL COCH, GLAMORGAN. TOPOGRAPHICAL NOTES.1 The river Taff, from its origin under the Brecon Beacons, after a course of about twenty-six miles through the northern and mountain district of Glamorgan, escapes by a deep and narrow ravine across the last elevation, and rolls its course, unfettered, to the Bristol Channel. The ridge which it thus finally cleaves, and which divides the hill-country from the plain, is part of the great southern escarpment of the coal basin of Glamor¬ gan, supported there by the mountain limestone rising from below, and in its turn reposing upon the old red sandstone, the denuded surface of which forms, under the later horizontal rocks and drift gravel, the basis of the plain. The escarpment, extending for many miles along the contiguous counties of Monmouth and Gla¬ morgan, is traversed, in this immediate neighbourhood, by the three passes of the Ebbwy, the Rhymny, and the Taff. The heights bounding the latter river, though in actual elevation below some other parts of the chain, produce a very striking effect, from the abruptness of their rise from the plain. 1 The following article professes only to be a faithful account of the castle as it now stands, or as it may, by a very strict induction, be inferred to have stood. ARCH. CAMB., NEW SERIES, VOL. I. 2 I