David Howell uses eighteenth-century beggars at Tintern Abbey as a starting point for his research into the use of heritage sites by the homeless.

In 1782, the Reverend William Gilpin published his Observations on the River Wye, a notable contribution to the emerging picturesque movement. A key element of his work is a commentary on Tintern Abbey. It is not Gilpin’s reflections on, or etchings of the physical fabric of the medieval place of worship which are of significance, however, but his criticisms of the ‘wretched’ individuals to have made a home of the decayed site...