now the start and finish point of the Wales Coast Path. The gardens contain a bandstand used for summer concerts. The Chepstow Railway Bridge, slightly downstream, was built to an innovative and functional design by Isambard Kingdom Brunel in 1852. Most of Brunel's structures have since been replaced. The railway bridge runs alongside the A48 road bridge opened in 1988. Medieval and later buildings The town contains several notable post-mediaeval buildings. Grade II* listed buildings include: Castle Terrace – a row of bay-fronted terraced houses, built in about 1810 on Bridge Street (then called St Anne's Street), the road leading down to the Castle; Powis Almshouses – an L-shaped stone-built block of almshouses at the top of Bridge Street, built in 1721 following a bequest from a locally born vintner, Thomas Powis, who worked in London; Raglan Lodge – a Regency building in the town centre, Beaufort Square, built above a vaulted stone cellar which may have been a town hall or administrative centre for the mediaeval lordship. The heyday of the town's prosperity as a trading port in the late 18th and early 19th century is shown by the large number of town houses of that period, many of which are now used for other purposes such as offices and shops. One example is Gwy House, built in 1796 for a leading local merchant, which now houses the museum. The town centre itself features stone carvings, artworks, and information plaques placed in the pavement and walls, installed as part of a regeneration scheme in 2004/05; they illustrate Chepstow's history. Chepstow Racecourse and Piercefield Chepstow Racecourse was opened in 1926 in the grounds of Piercefield House, north of the town centre on the road towards Tintern. Piercefield House itself, a mansion house rebuilt in the late 18th century, is now ruined. Its wooded grounds, overlooking the River Wye, contain landscaped features from the time when visits to the estate were an important component of the "Wye Tour"; they are now incorporated into the Wye Valley Walk. Notable people Chepstow was the birthplace of the fraudster and "Popish Plot" informer William Bedloe (1650–1680), and of the physician and satirist James Davis (1706/07–1755). James Stephens (1821–1889), a stonemason who was a supporter of the Chartists and later an influential Australian trade unionist, was born in the town, as was Sir Isambard Owen (1857–1927), a physician who became an academic and a leading