Menu
- Home
- Search▼
- List▼
- Add▼
- My Relate▼
- Admin▼
ViewsWatchers |
Contained Places
[edit] GovernanceUnder the Local Government Act 1888, an elected county council was set up to take over the functions of the Pembrokeshire Quarter Sessions. The county was then divided into a series of urban and rural districts, an organization of local government which lasted from 1894 until 1974. The County Council and the administrative county of Pembrokeshire were abolished under the Local Government Act 1972 and Pembrokeshire became part of the new county of Dyfed which also included Carmarthenshire and Cardiganshire. The new county was divided into districts, two of which, the South Pembrokeshire District and the Preseli District, covered Pembrokeshire. In 1996, under the Local Government (Wales) Act 1994, the county of Dyfed was broken up into its constituent parts, and Pembrokeshire has been a unitary authority since then. There are 80 local Communities (the successors to civil parishes) in the county which have their own councils. [edit] History
Human habitation of the region that is now Pembrokeshire extends back to between 125,000 and 70,000 years[1] and there are numerous prehistoric sites such as Pentre Ifan, and neolithic remains (12,000 to 6,500 years ago), more of which were revealed in an aerial survey during the 2018 heatwave;[2] in the same year, a 1st-century Celtic chariot burial was discovered, the first such find in Wales.[3][4] There may have been dairy farming in Neolithic times.[5] [edit] Roman periodThere is little evidence of Roman occupation in what is now Pembrokeshire. Ptolemy's Geography, written , mentioned some coastal places, two of which have been identified as the River Teifi and what is now St Davids Head, but most Roman writers did not mention the area; there may have been a Roman settlement near St Davids and a road from Bath, but this comes from a 14th-century writer. Any evidence for villas or Roman building materials reported by mediaeval or later writers has not been verified, though some remains near Dale were tentatively identified as Roman in character by topographer Richard Fenton in his Historical Tour of 1810. Fenton stated that he had "...reason to be of opinion that they had not colonized Pembrokeshire till near the decline of their empire in Britain".[6] Part of a possible Roman road is noted by CADW near Llanddewi Velfrey,[7] and another near Wiston.[8] Wiston is also the location of the first Roman fort discovered in Pembrokeshire, investigated in 2013.[9] Some artefacts, including coins and weapons, have been found, but it is not clear whether these belonged to Romans or to a Romanised population. Welsh tradition has it that Magnus Maximus founded Haverfordwest, and took a large force of local men on campaign in Gaul in 383 which, together with the reduction of Roman forces in south Wales, left a defensive vacuum which was filled by incomers from Ireland.[10] [edit] Sub-Roman periodBetween 350 and 400, an Irish tribe known as the Déisi settled in the region known to the Romans as Demetae.[1] The Déisi merged with the local Welsh, with the regional name underlying Demetae evolving into Dyfed, which existed as an independent petty kingdom from the 5th century.[1] In 904, Hywel Dda married Elen (died 943),[11] daughter of the king of Dyfed Llywarch ap Hyfaidd, and merged Dyfed with his own maternal inheritance of Seisyllwg, forming the new realm of Deheubarth ("southern district"). Between the Roman and Norman periods, the region was subjected to raids from Vikings, who established settlements and trading posts at Haverfordwest, Fishguard, Caldey Island and elsewhere.[1][6] [edit] Norman periodDyfed remained an integral province of Deheubarth, but this was contested by invading Normans and Flemings who arrived between 1067 and 1111.[1] The region became known as Pembroke (sometimes archaic "Penbroke"[12]), after the Norman castle built in the cantref of Penfro. In 1136, Prince Owain Gwynedd at Crug Mawr near Cardigan met and destroyed a 3,000-strong Norman/Flemish army and incorporated Deheubarth into Gwynedd.[13][1] Norman/Flemish influence never fully recovered in West Wales.[14] In 1138, the county of Pembrokeshire was named as a county palatine. Rhys ap Gruffydd, the son of Owain Gwynedd's daughter Gwenllian, re-established Welsh control over much of the region and threatened to retake all of Pembrokeshire, but died in 1197. After Deheubarth was split by a dynastic feud, Llywelyn the Great almost succeeded in retaking the region of Pembroke between 1216 and his death in 1240.[1] [edit] Middle agesFrom 1284, when the Statute of Rhuddlan was enacted to establish the rule of law in Wales,[15] there followed a period of relative peace in Pembrokeshire for more than 100 years. The establishment or re-establishment of a large number of castles under the Marcher Lords reinforced this.[10]
The Laws in Wales Act 1535 effectively abolished the powers of the Marcher Lords and divided the county into seven hundreds, roughly corresponding to the seven pre-Norman cantrefi of Dyfed.[10][17] The hundreds were (clockwise from the northeast): Cilgerran, Cemais, Dewisland, Roose, Castlemartin, Narberth and Dungleddy and each was divided into civil parishes;[18] a 1578 map in the British Library is the earliest known to show parishes and chapelries in Pembrokeshire.[19] The Elizabethan era brought renewed prosperity to the county through an opening up of rural industries, including agriculture, mining and fishing, with exports to England and Ireland, though the formerly staple woollen industry had all but disappeared.[10] During the First English Civil War (1642–1646) the county gave strong support to the Roundheads (Parliamentarians), in contrast to the rest of Wales, which was staunchly Royalist. In spite of this, an incident in Pembrokeshire triggered the opening shots of the Second English Civil War when local units of the New Model Army mutinied. Oliver Cromwell defeated the uprising at the Siege of Pembroke in July 1648.[20] On 13 August 1649, the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland began when New Model Army forces sailed from Milford Haven.[21] [edit] 18th and 19th centuriesIn 1720, Emmanuel Bowen[22] described Pembrokeshire as having five market towns, 45 parishes and about 4,329 houses, with an area of . In 1791 a petition was presented to the House of Commons concerning the poor state of many of the county's roads, pointing out that repairs could not be made compulsory by the law as it stood. The petition was referred to committee.[23] People applying for poor relief were often put to work mending roads. Workhouses were poorly documented. Under the Poor Laws, costs and provisions were kept to a minimum, but the emphasis was often on helping people to be self-employed. While the Poor Laws provided a significant means of support, there were many charitable and benefit societies.[24] After the Battle of Fishguard, the failed French invasion of 1797, 500 French prisoners were held at Golden Hill Farm, Pembroke.[25] From 1820 to 1878 one of the county's prisons, with a capacity of 86, was in the grounds of Haverfordwest Castle.[26] In 1831, the area of the county was calculated to be with a population of 81,424.[22] It was not until nearly the end of the 19th century that mains water was provided to rural south Pembrokeshire by means of a reservoir at Rosebush and cast iron water pipes throughout the district.[27] [edit] 20th centuryThroughout much of the 20th century (1911 to 1961) the population density in the county remained stable while it rose in England and Wales as a whole.[28] There was considerable military activity in Pembrokeshire and offshore in the 20th century: a naval base at Milford Haven because German U-boats were active off the coast in World War I[29] and, in World War II, military exercises in the Preseli Hills and a number of military airfields.[30] The wartime increase in air activity saw a number of aircraft accidents and fatalities, often due to unfamiliarity with the terrain.[31] From 1943 to 1944, 5,000 soldiers from the United States Army's 110th Infantry Regiment were based in the county, preparing for D-Day.[32][33] Military and industrial targets in the county were subjected to bombing during World War II.[34] After the end of the war, German prisoners of war were accommodated in Pembrokeshire, the largest prison being at Haverfordwest, housing 600.[35] The County of Pembroke War Memorial in Haverfordwest carries the names of 1,200 of those that perished in World War I.[36] In 1972, a second reservoir for south Pembrokeshire, at Llys y Fran, was completed.[37] [edit] Research Tips
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
