Place:Hamlet of St. Thomas, Pembrokeshire, Wales

source: Family History Library Catalog

Haverford St. Thomas was one of the three chapelries of Haverfordwest, the others being Haverford St. Martin and Haverford St. Mary. The Ordnance Survey Map of Pembrokeshire 1900 shows both the parish of St. Thomas within Haverfordwest (Haverford St. Thomas) and another parish immediately outside the town to the south labelled Hamlet of St. Thomas.

The latter was the rural section of the original St. Thomas's parish which was divided into two when urban and rural parishes had to be considered separately after the Local Government Act, 1892. (Source: Parishes in Haverfordwest Registration District 1837-1974)

A Vision of Britain through Time provides the following description of St. Thomas from John Marius Wilson's Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales of 1870-72:

"St. Thomas' church, on the summit of the hill, stands in the midst of a spacious churchyard, which formerly was the playground of a public school, but is now enclosed. ...Acres of St. Thomas: 1,016. Real property: £5,674. Population: 2,033. Houses: 381. Population of the part within the borough: 1,876. Houses: 347. The living of of St. Thomas is a rectory in the diocese of St. Davids. Value of St. Thomas, £319. Patron of the second, the Lord Chancellor."

This is a section of a very long description of Haverfordwest and describes St. Thomas Parish before it was broken into two parts. The two parts of St. Thomas were individual parishes within the Haverfordwest Registration District right up until 1974. The Hamlet of St. Thomas covered quite a considerable area. (See the map of 1900 expanded to a reasonable visibility level)

Merlin's Bridge is marked on the Ordnance Survey Map of 1900, on the border between Haverfordwest St. Thomas and the Hamlet of St. Thomas. It has since then grown sufficiently to have become a separate community (or civil parish) on the edge of Haverfordwest and may be a replacement for the whole of the Hamlet of St. Thomas.

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.