The Inscribed Stones

"Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh" 
Matthew 24:44 
Some more interesting stones called me on a "treasure hunt"  today, the "inscribed stones" on the slope of Mynydd Llangatwg, above Brynmawr. I'm just surprised they aren't more widely known locally, even if only in walking circles. I was told about them at the (Blaenau Gwent) Heritage Day back in October, and have only now managed to find time to go in search of them. I've asked various people about them since and no-one had heard of them. 
Good friend A and I wrapped up well for our foray up onto the hill. Although warm and sunny in the valley it was bitingly cold on the hillside above. We had a "map" of sorts, showing roughly where the stones were to be found, and a friendly farmer had confirmed our intended path up onto the hillside. We soon found the first two, but then it seemed a long hike to the next one - which turned out to be the fifth in the sequence (which is in the bottom right of the photo with part of the inscription from Matthew), we'd missed two somehow! Undaunted we continued up wards in search of another stone, noted as at the side of the old tram road. We'd have a look for the missing two on the way back down later.
We soon found the line of the old tram road, remarkably obvious in the terrain even after all this time. Built in 1830, it connected Ironmaster Crawshay Bailey's Nantyglo Ironworks to the quarries above Llangatwg and the wharf on the Mon/Brecon canal. The line of the tramroad petered out into seriously boggy looking ground so we gave further exploration in that direction a miss for today, it was heading towards the Lonely Shepherd which will be the subject of another walk before too long.
Bidding farewell to the windswept mountain ponies who made my 60's long hair look positively crew-cut in comparison we headed back down the valley, in search of the "missing" stones. We'd easily found numbers two and five, so we set about scouring the area in between for the other two. Not an easy task as the clumps of gorse liberally dumped around the place reduced visibility and forced us to criss-cross the area to find the stones. After about ten minutes number four revealed itself, which would hopefully give us a bearing on finding number three - surely not difficult in such a relatively confined space. It took us another ten minutes criss-crossing the area until we found it, nestling under some gorse bushes which all but obscured it from casual observation.
The stones are relatively flat-topped pieces of rock, randomly lying around the hillside, and have been inscribed - carved or chiselled out - with biblical quotations, maybe to remind passers-by of their religious duties in times gone by. The carving has been attributed to a Jack Rushton (Brynmawr Historical Society) born in 1920 apparently. I thought they'd been done much earlier, maybe when the tram road was in full use back in the 1800's and the pathways across the top much busier. Whenever, they were a fascinating focal point for a ramble and treasure hunt on the hills above Brynmawr.