Lydney
Lydney is a town and civil parish in Gloucestershire, England.
It is on the west bank of the River Severn in the Forest of Dean District, and is 16 miles (25 km) southwest of Gloucester. The town has been bypassed by the A48 road since 1995. The population was 8,960 at the 2001 census, decreasing to 8,766 at the 2011 census, and increasing to 10,043 at the 2021 census.
Getting to Lydney
By train from London Paddington take the hourly Cardiff and Swansea train and change at Newport for the train to Gloucester. Westbound from Gloucester that train trundles on from Lydney to Chepstow, Newport and Cardiff then winds up the Llynfi Valley to Maesteg. Trains run hourly across the Midlands from Nottingham via Birmingham New St, Cheltenham and Gloucester to Lydney, continuing to Newport and Cardiff.
- 01Lydney railway station is a mile south
Stagecoach West Bus 23 runs hourly from Gloucester to Lydney (50 min) and continues to Coleford.
Worth seeing
- 01Romano-Celtic Temple and Lydney Park
The site was archaeologically excavated in the 1920s by Sir Mortimer Wheeler, with the assistance of J.R.R.
- 02Dean Forest Railway
48 Forest Rd, Lydney GL15 4ET (on B4234),.
- 03Hopewell Colliery Museum
Most mining heritage reflects big industrial enterprises, but in the Forest of Dean it was more like prospecting in the Yukon: residents can mine their own claim, a right enshrined in law in 1838.
- 04Dean Heritage Centre
Museum in an old watermill demonstrating forest trades such as charcoal-making, and the "free-mining" heritage as at Hopewell.
Getting around Lydney the local way
- Go nextThe bridge over the river, which opened in 1906 and replaced a ferry (which promptly went bankrupt owing to an inevitable loss of custom), is particularly fine.
From Wikivoyage: Tintern, CC BY-SA. Not yet checked by us. Last edited 2026-09.
Text adapted from Wikipedia and Wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 4.0. Photograph: mattbuck (see Commons), Wikimedia Commons.