Place:St. Dogwells, Pembrokeshire, Wales

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Wolfscastle (Welsh: Casblaidd) also spelt Wolf's Castle, is a village and community in Pembrokeshire, between Haverfordwest and Fishguard. It was historically in the parish of St Dogwells.

Wolfscastle comprises two small villages; Wolfscastle proper, at the top of a hill, and Ford, situated in the river valley below. The remains of a motte and bailey castle lie in the upper village, a strategic location determined by its situation at the northern end of Treffgarne gorge. The village lies at the confluence of the Western Cleddau and the Anghof rivers.

The A40 road, the London to Fishguard trunk route, passes through Wolfscastle and provides the main transport route to and from the village. A railway line from Clarbeston Road to Fishguard Harbour carries two Swansea–Fishguard boat trains in each direction daily through Ford. At one time, there was a station named Wolf's Castle Halt near Ford for both passengers and the loading of milk from local farms, but this is no longer in existence, having closed in 1964 after the Beeching cuts.

Wolfscastle is mainly agricultural due to its rural location. Agriculture involves dairy, sheep and beef farming, and several farms can be found within the village and its environs.

Previous economic activities included slate quarrying near Sealyham, roadstone quarrying in Treffgarne gorge and a village post office, all of which have ceased operating. Also, the running of the railway halt merited the employment of staff.

A Welsh Independent chapel, known as Pen-y-Bont, stands near the river in Ford. Several churches are to be found in the area – St Margaret's in Wolfscastle itself, St Michael's in Treffgarne, and St Dogfael's at St Dogwells (a grade II* listed building).

Treffgarne was the parish to the southwest of St. Dogwells, but Litle Treffgarne was a settlement within St. Dogwells.

Folklore

Wolfscastle's claim to fame is that it is allegedly the place where the last wild wolf in Wales was slain. Nearby, east of Treffgarne gorge lies the hamlet of Little Treffgarne, where the Welsh national hero, Owain Glyndŵr (or the Anglicised version, Glendower) was born according to local folklore in 1353. (Most historical sources quote him as being born c. 1359). The folklore was based on the fact that the area was home to members of the family of Glyndwr's mother.

Another legend of the area claims that a local medium, Sarah Bevan, prophesied the arrival of the railway after experiencing a vision in the 18th century. The vision was described as a line of carts moving through the centre of Treffgarne gorge at high speed, with the frontmost cart on fire, heralding the coming of the as yet uninvented steam locomotive on rails.

Research Tips

• A 1900 Ordnance Survey map of the historic county of Pembrokeshire is available on the A Vision of Britain through Time website. This shows all the old parishes within their urban and rural districts. Large farms and estates are also marked. On the Haverfordwest Rural District page there is a sketchmap indicating the civil parishes of Haverfordwest Rural District as of 1935.
• Pembrokeshire Archives has a website with a list of their holdings, as well as historical notes on places in Pembrokeshire. Its address is Prendergast, Haverfordwest, SA61 2PE; Tel No: 01437 775456 or (+44)1437 775456 (out of UK), E-mail: record.office@pembrokeshire.gov.uk
• GENUKI has a page on each of the old counties of Wales and, under these counties, pages for each of the ecclesiastical parishes within the county. Information is gathered under a number of headings and the amount of information varies from parish to parish. Parish descriptions are based on a gazetteer dated 1835 and thus the emphasis is on ecclesiastical parishes. (Civil parishes were not yet established.) The submitter is very firm about his copyright. This should not stop anyone from reading the material.
• The GENUKI Pembrokeshire pages include, under Description and Travel close to the bottom of the page, a link "parish map" to a map website showing boundaries and settlements before 1850. On the linked page will be maps of several parishes located close to each other.
• GENUKI also provides references to other organizations who hold genealogical information for the local area, but there is no guarantee that the website has been kept up to date for every county.
• FreeBMD provides a link to a list of the civil registration districts for each Welsh county from 1837 to 1996. Civil registration districts changed with varying densities of population and improvements in communication. Most counties and unitary authorities now have only one district. The list helps with providing names for the registration districts listed in the FreeBMD index and also as a guide for where to look for census entries.
• The FamilySearch Wiki has a series of pages similar to those provided by GENUKI and these have been prepared at a later date. The Wiki may look like Wikipedia but the information has been provided for family historians. There are tables of links between the parishes in the historic counties of Wales and their post-1996 counterparts. This is the only genealogical website found that provides this information universally; others are not as thorough.
• Some words in Welsh come up time and time again and you may want to know what they mean or how to pronounce them. For example,
  "Eglwys" is a church and the prefix "Llan" is a parish.
  "w" and "y" are used as vowels in Welsh.
  "Ll" is pronounced either "cl" or "hl" or somewhere in between. "dd" sounds like "th".
  The single letter "Y" is "the" and "Yn" means "in".
  "uwch" means "above"; "isod" is "below" or "under";
  "gwch" is "great", "ychydig" is "little";
  "cwm" is a "valley".

In both Welsh and English all these words are commonly used in place names in the UK. Place names are often hyphenated, or two words are combined into one. Entering your problem phrase into Google Search, including the term "meaning in Welsh", will lead you to Google's quick translation guide. I'm no authority; these are just things I have picked up while building up this gazetteer for WeRelate.