NESTLED between Tudor Street and Castle Meadows, Linda Vista Gardens is a little patch of calm and landscaped gardening for a soul to lose themselves in.

Translated from the Spanish tongue as ‘beautiful view’, it's not hard to see why.

Amidst the brooding backdrop of the imperial Blorenge, there’s a wealth of orchids, shrubs, and unusual specimen trees for those with a passing interest in botany to meander gaily through. And of course, there's the iconic house.

The listed building which overlooks the soothing sprawl like a benevolent god has recently been purchased by new owners who plan to restore it and rewrite a new chapter in its curious history.

Rewind the clock to the 19th century and Abergavenny was a somewhat unsavoury place in which to dwell. Appalling sanitary conditions entailed that clean water was a luxury and the air was often foul.

A report from 1847 described parts of Tudor Street as “indescribably filthy and almost unapproachable from the stench.”

Into this cesspit and cauldron of poverty, the Jenkins brothers were born. William, John, and Henry were not happy with the lot fate had drawn for them, and so left their humble abode in Chicken Street (now Flannel Street) to find their fortune in Chile.

Although the South American country may seem like a strange shore for a trio of young Welshmen to pursue their dreams, Chile at the time had strong links with the UK. In 1811 they declared independence from Spain and their Navy was headed by Britain’s Admiral Cochrane.

The UK had strong business interests in Chile because of its wealth of mineral resources such as copper and sodium nitrate, which was used to make explosives and fertiliser.

Although the Jenkins brothers never became copper barons or nitrate kings they turned a healthy buck through building warehouses for the exporters and houses for the workers.

Having made his fortune, Henry, his wife Mary, and their six children returned to dear old Abergavenny, where the lad from Chicken Street upped his game, splashed the cash, and moved into a plush residence in Brecon Road where he employed two live-in servants.

Whilst lording it in his new abode, old Henry had a much bigger manor built overlooking the river Usk and shielded from the none-too-salubrious quarter of Tudor Street by a wall of fine foliage.

Completed in 1875, Henry’s new house was named Linda Vista, but he never really got to appreciate that ‘beautiful view’ all that much because two years later he died.

His legacy certainly lives on though. The Whitehead family, who owned the Ebbw Vale steelworks purchased the house and ground in 1925 before selling the garden to the Abergavenny Corporation in 1957 for the public’s pleasure.

Henry was not alone in leaving a lasting footprint on the face of Abergavenny. His brother William who died in 1893, aged 74. after retiring to The Willows in Pen-y-Pound, owned much of the land that we now know as Avenue Road. He also donated the plot for a girls’ school to be built on Harold Road, which after numerous changes through the years we now know as Cantref Primary.

It’s certainly an eye-opener to find out just how much of Abergavenny was built with Chilean coin.