The ruins of once the richest and most important abbey in Wales stand on the banks of the River Wye which is the boundary between England and Wales (here). The abbey was closed in 1536, after Henry VIII's infamous Dissolution of the religious houses in England and Wales (over 800!). He basically privatised the monasteries and nunneries by closing them down and selling the buildings along with the lands belonging to them to the newly chosen elite in the country. Sadly enough, most of them decided to tear these beautiful medieval gems of architecture down and use the stones to build their new "renaissance" palaces.